


halo of salt

by englishsummerrain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of PTSD, Panic Attacks, Recovery, Sparring as Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28546278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: Chenle just wants to retire at the bottom of the world. He doesn't need a head full of ghosts. He certainly doesn't need Lee Jeno.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 24
Kudos: 101
Collections: Chenji + '00





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A tremendous series of thank yous to -- Dia for going above and beyond in beta reading this, rescuing me ten times over and in general being absolutely phenomenal when it came to ironing out all the kinks. You are so awesome and I am forever indebted to you. Shauna and Nee for both your feedback and your reassurances, helping with consistency, as well as helping when my brain really didn't want to give me anything to write. Ellie for encouraging my absolutely deranged ideas for this.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> [(playlist!)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/168X7Rtkqd0pUUk7hRLHuj?si=k3bwRR6tRIS1AD_7yoHi_w)

In a way Chenle is one of the lucky ones.

In a way he got off easy. He never had to stand on the docks and stare out to sea, praying for a body to emerge from the waves. He never had to say goodbye to an empty grave.

He’d been flung from the cockpit when Ashmouth ripped through Jade Hurricane’s hull; neural bridge severed, the whole world spinning around him in flashes of bright lights and the bioluminescent glow of Kaiju blue. The air was bitter and cold and he tried to remember his training — tried to remember anything beyond the ringing in his ears and the coppery taste of blood in his mouth — before he hit the ocean with a force so strong it felt like his bones were being smashed into powder.

Jade Hurricane’s core had exploded a few seconds later, and the blast wave had pushed him further under, though he’d managed to break the surface again. Floating in the midnight black, the beautiful shell of his Jaeger ripped to shreds by Ashmouth's claws. Ashmouth had sliced her arm in two, scattering scrap through the air, and Chenle had screamed Kun’s name, paddling furiously — until a hunk of wreckage cut through the water beside him and pulled him back under.

The sea was quiet. Dark. Jade Hurricane’s shell shone even as she’d fallen into the water, and Chenle had stared for a second, entranced by the siren song of destruction. Waves broke over his head, and he’d turned and swum towards the lights; his lungs aching, tides pulling at him — every part of him frozen to the bone.

Chenle wakes three hours later than everyone else. At this time of the day Auckland’s Shatterdome is either oppressively loud or deadly quiet, depending on how close the algorithm Hong Kong’s K-Science department had cooked up says they are to the breach shitting out another Kaiju; considering they’re still at least a month out, it falls on the side of serene silence.

They’re operating on a skeleton crew at this point, most of the personnel taking their annual leave to soak up the sunshine. His boots echo in the halls and there’s no awkward small talk, no forced good mornings. The cafeteria is near empty; his time of arrival sandwiched perfectly between breakfast and lunch, allowing him to ‘enjoy’ his food undisturbed.

It's good. Chenle likes the quiet. Always has. For all the good his big mouth and lack of brain-to-speech filter had done for him, Chenle's favourite moments were found mostly in the delicate web of silence that he tended to weave around himself. He valued his solitude — placed it right around 'good socks in winter' and 'a chair that doesn't give me back problems' on his list of essentials.

Higher, if he was to be pressed. He spent four years in the Shanghai Shatterdome. That kind of packed environment made you appreciate the little things, all the times you get to sequester yourself away and just breathe for once.

Chenle loads up his plate with leftovers, grumbling when he sees what their chef had cooked up that morning. More green cardboard that they _swore_ was bok choy. More dry rice. More imitations of Chinese food in an attempt to feed the Shatterdome’s considerable expat population.

He picks a single leaf up and drops it on the side of his plate, not particularly hungry but knowing he should eat at some point or another just to kick start the day. He’s not due anywhere until the afternoon, but he wants to head back to the tech lab to at least copy down some of the schematics Renjun had _promised_ he’d send through — experimental weapons designs he’d apparently had forwarded from one of his contacts in Tokyo.

It’s monotonous, but it’s better than moping around; better than sitting in the break room and incidentally running into the K-Science side of the staff, or being stuck on a video call with PPDC middle management, or anything else that didn’t further his agenda of helping punch the shit out of the next Kaiju that decided to show its ugly face.

He picks at a few grains of rice, and as he does the table clangs with the impact of someone dropping their tray, the action sending ripples through the surface of his piping hot tea.

"You're back early," Chenle says, not even bothering to look up. There’s only one person here who shares a table with him.

He pulls out another slimy piece of bok choy and adds it to his collection.

"What?"

He looks up.

"Oh," Chenle says, blinking up at the unfamiliar face looming over him. “You’re not Jisung.”

As if it wasn't obvious enough. Jisung had been deployed to the Sydney Shatterdome a week ago to fix two Jaegers that had decided having a simultaneous hull breach was a fun idea. _Jisung_ was evidently _still_ there; probably soaking up the sun and failing miserably at flirting with Australia's star Ranger, Lee Donghyuck. As was par for the course.

"No?"

The new guy is dressed in uniform, not the baggy J-Tech jumpsuit Chenle is currently wearing but a fresh new design, much more fitted, like he's able to jump straight into the Conn-pod. There are no oil stains in the fabric, no visible holes, and the patch on his arm is enough to tell Chenle that this boy is not from around here; not that it matters. Chenle has a foreign flag on his arm, too. Half the base at Auckland does: people just like him, hiding from their ghosts at the edge of the world.

Chenle glances around, trying to work out where the hell the guy had come from. The cafeteria is mostly empty, only a few recruits playing cards together in the corner furthest from his. The only sound is the clatter of boots on the upper floors and the screech of the gulls outside the bay doors, everything else held in perfect silence. No sign of any committee, or visiting trainees, or anything that explains the intrusion into Chenle's world.

The guy is still standing opposite him, looking slightly worried, and Chenle shakes his head. _Manners_.

“Sorry,” he says. He gestures to the bench. “Sit down.” He straightens up a little more, fixing his abysmal posture and watching as the guy swings into the seat opposite.

He’s handsome. Born to be a Ranger, no doubt, the kind that got plastered across billboards — beautiful, deadly, sharp jaw and sparkling eyes — the star of the training program, smiling at Chenle as he picks up his cutlery and examines his food.

“Who were you looking for?” he asks.

“Just my friend. He was dispatched to Sydney last week. I’m Chenle, by the way.”

He holds out a hand. The guy blinks. “I know,” he says.

Chenle tilts his head to the side, food fully forgotten. “You know?”

What had he heard? Did they still talk about him in Shanghai? Had the news spread east to Tokyo, now? It’s been two years since he’s been in a Jaeger; surely he’s been forgotten. Surely no-one had cared, either.

He’s just an ex-Ranger on an extended holiday, soaking up the southern sunshine and trying to forget he’d ever led another life.

“We were in the Academy together. I’m Lee Jeno.”

In a way, Chenle is one of the lucky ones because he can just pick up his phone and message Kun and ask him if he remembers Lee Jeno from when they were in the Academy. He’s lucky because Kun is _alive,_ the only price he'd paid being the use of his legs. They’d pulled him from the ocean, clinging to the wreckage, which was more than he could say for so many other Rangers. Not many of them got to say goodbye. Even fewer said goodbye to something more than a coffin. Instead, Chenle had leaned down, hugged Kun and said goodbye looking him in the eyes, four years in Shanghai packed into a single suitcase.

“Sorry it had to be like this,” Chenle said. Kun frowned. He’d gotten mandatory laser eye surgery before his promotion to Ranger, but when he’d retired he’d gone back to wearing glasses, just because he thought they made him look kinder.

They did, but it wasn’t a false impression; Kun had always been kind. From the day he and Chenle had met, until the day he’d handed in his papers and officially retired from the Jaeger program. Kun was a good person. He'd made Chenle feel like a star. He'd taken care of him in one way or another, much like an older brother. They'd shared the same pod in the Academy, they’d shared a Jaeger, they’d shared the Drift — every part of them laid bare.

The two of them were naturals. A one in a million chance, their compatibility obvious from the day they’d met. Everyone had been clambering to be partnered with Qian Kun, and everyone had realized they would have zero chance once he and Chenle had started to train together.

And then it was all torn from him.

The waves beat against the docks and the humidity dripped from Chenle’s skin, and that perfect connection was broken. He hated that whenever Kun looked at him, Chenle could still feel the Drift reach for him in some way; a flicker of sadness through their muted neural link.

“Take care,” Kun had said. “You know you don’t have to retire forever, Chenle.”

Chenle had just smiled, trying to close off his thoughts to the person who had shared his brain for four years. The sky was bruised purple, and he was pretty sure Kun knew, anyway.

He remembers Jeno; everything coming through in searing vividness, an avalanche proceeding the first jog of his memory.

Chenle was a star in the academy. He’d blasted through all his evaluations, graduated top of the class. All the trainers had sung his praise, and why wouldn't they? Freshly eighteen, already secure with his Drift partner, a 99 percent drop rate.

He was made to be a Ranger, and it felt good to have it acknowledged.

Except when it came to combat training, Chenle had performed terribly. He was out of shape; no formal training beyond wrestling with the other kids in the schoolyard, and the first time they’d gone to the Kwoon room Jeno had beat him _mercilessly_. Even when they practiced after hours — when it was just the two of them in the echoing silence of the room, sweat pouring down their faces and limbs aching — even then had Jeno knocked him on his ass repeatedly.

Chenle remembers these times well, because Kun had said extra practice was pointless, and Jaemin had said it was stupid, but Jeno had lifted an eyebrow and said sure when Chenle had dangled the pass he'd swiped from one of the visiting Rangers in front of his face and asked if he'd liked a midnight rendezvous.

Maybe Chenle was trying to prove something then. Jeno was lightning fast on his feet, and Chenle had never been able to make heads or tails of him — the way he smiled made Chenle always feel like he was holding something back — and though they spent so many nights sparring with each other, they barely did more than acknowledge each other outside of those midnight training sessions.

But inside, inside of them they danced; battle like a song, the clatter of their staves against each other as Chenle beat Jeno back over and over, somehow always still ending up underneath Jeno in the end.

“So why are you in Auckland?” Chenle asks. Jeno had sat down with him unprompted at dinner, still wearing his shiny new uniform, tray piled high with food.

He picks up a kumara chip and chews on it rather thoroughly before he answers. “Same reason as you, right?”

“What reason is that?” Chenle asks, cocking an eyebrow. The mess hall is filled with chatter, everyone coming out early to make sure they get the best parts of dinner before they run out.

“End of the world. Might as well retire somewhere quiet.”

“Retire? You’re not retiring. Have you even seen the inside of a Conn-Pod?”

He remembers this, too. Jeno hadn't tested Drift compatible with anyone in their class. It wasn't unusual for someone to find their co-pilot outside the academy, matched up by the PPDC algorithm that none of them truly understood, but everyone had simply assumed that Jeno would end up with Jaemin. They were best friends, after all; platonic soulmates. Yet time and time again they'd failed. Time and time again they were told, conclusively, that they were not Drift compatible.

At one point Jeno had begged Trainer Moon to let him try with Jaemin anyway, because there must have been a mistake, and Chenle thinks Jeno's puppy eyes might have let him get away with it, but he also hadn't learned the end to the story.

Chenle had graduated a week later, been fast-tracked into Shanghai, and then a month after he was shoving a plasma blade through the armoured stomach of a category two Kaiju — codename Lud — Kaiju Blue leaking all over Jade Hurricane, the sea churning black below.

He'd heard later that Jaemin had drifted successfully with Korea's golden boy, Jung Jaehyun, and that Jeno had stayed in Tokyo.

The way Jeno's face hardens at the question tells him where the story went after that.

"No," he says. "But I have to give up at some point, don't I? I've been in limbo for six years. How much longer can I hope?"

Chenle huffs, stirring his mashed potatoes with his fork. He can't even offer words of comfort. Piloting a Jaeger was the best thing he'd ever done, the only time he'd ever felt alive. He's been craving that excitement ever since, simultaneously afraid that he'll never reach it again or that maybe he would, and all the heartbreak he'd gone through at Kun's retirement would have been for naught.

It doesn’t matter. There are safer ways to chase the high, safer ways than burning a candle at both ends, fingers pressed tight around the wick.

These days he’s into J-tech, a pretty common path for any retired Ranger. The learning curve was steep, but a Ranger would have enough of a baseline that everything else was just keeping up with the constantly evolving tech.

Given the opportunity, Chenle had relished it because it was easier to cram his mind full of circuits and diagrams than remember what it had felt like in the Drift. It was easy to work until he was exhausted, lapsing into the all-consuming darkness of sleep, waking up at the small hours of the morning to walk down to the tech labs and repeat the process over and over again until he could almost pretend he still didn’t hear Kun’s voice in his head.

"You can always hope,” Chenle says. He’s not sure who’s speaking, though the more the words come out of his mouth the more his own voice takes over. “You'll be compatible with someone, surely."

"We aren't all as lucky as you," Jeno says. It's slightly bitter, and Chenle can't help but be taken aback, though Jeno smoothes over it quickly with a soft smile. "Anyway. Maybe I'll take a break for a bit. You know I waited a year for a position to open up here?"

Chenle believes it. Auckland is popular. The weather is much milder than Sydney and far less extreme than basically anywhere else, and you get the bonus of not having to deal with any North Americans. Lima was the second most popular retirement gig, but Chenle hadn't fancied the massive scale of South America’s only Shatterdome, and so New Zealand it had been.

"Why not go to Sydney?" Chenle asks. "If you're looking for a position, they're bleeding Rangers."

This side of the breach had been loud recently. Auckland usually only got called up if the Pacific Islands were threatened, or if Sydney needed backup — they only boasted a single Mark-Three Jaeger, enough mostly to defend the country from the occasional Kaiju that drifted this far south, and nothing less. Otherwise it was business as usual, everyone here almost forgotten, the world moving forward like there weren’t giant aliens rising from the sea trying to kill them.

The Shatterdome was generally like that; quiet, but welcoming. People talked if you talked to them, but most of the personnel kept to themselves

Perfect for Chenle. No need to be reminded that he was once a star — the most promising young recruit the Jaeger Program had seen in years. No need to answer the probing questions. His role was enough of an answer — the fact he was still in perfect physical condition. The fact that sometimes he'd sit in the hangar — not doing repairs, just sitting — with Jisung for no reason other than that he could. Watching the Jaegers. Staring. Wishing.

Doing pull-ups in his room. Heading to the gym at odd hours to do an hour on the treadmill. He did open water swimming; Bean Rock this year, the Auckland Harbour and Mount Maunganui the year before. He was in top physical condition, probably better than some of the active Rangers at this point. If they'd needed him to, he could be in a Jaeger in a week.

And yet he wasn’t.

"You should come back to Shanghai," Kun had said. He'd retired and returned to being an officer within the year. Something about never being able to stay away from the PPDC. He calls Chenle from the board room, the clatter of the Shatterdome evident around him.

"I don't want to."

"You won't be replacing me if you Drift again, you know? They need good Rangers like you."

"I'm not trying to replace you. I just don’t want to."

(Every conversation is the same.)

"Why don't I go to Sydney? I don't want to," Jeno says. He takes a drink of his water and the tray rattles slightly when he places it down. "Don't ask stupid questions."

Jisung comes back from Sydney three days later. He sits where Jeno has been sitting, and Jeno doesn't join the table that night.

He doesn't come in the morning, either, despite the fact Jisung is working and Chenle is not, and Chenle eats breakfast alone, sipping his tea and listening to the rain fall on the roof.

It doesn’t bother him. If Jeno doesn't want to be his friend, he truly doesn't care; in fact he almost prefers it. A link to his past — especially his past at the Academy — is the last thing he needs in his tenuous solitude, and so he doesn't pursue him. He's not really sure what Jeno is here to do, anyway. Waste his talents, maybe.

('Just like you,' Kun would have said.)

Chenle bats away the thought and tells him, out loud, to shut up.

He runs into Jeno in the gym at eleven, clearly still operating on Tokyo time, because no-one else at the base is insane enough to come this late at night. Because everyone else has military level wakeup times, and Chenle is just — doing whatever he does. Taniwha Fang hasn’t been out in months and Chenle spends most of his time talking to his contacts in the other Shatterdomes, only occasionally going into the hangar and sitting beside the Jisung on the catwalk, staring into Taniwha Fang’s blank eyes and clamping down on any fleeting dreams.

"Hey," Chenle says. He stands in the doorway for a second, contemplating if he should leave but deciding against it because he truly doesn't have anything against Jeno. As far as he's concerned Jeno is _nice_ , still, even if he reminds him of less savoury things.

"Hey," Jeno replies. He's running. Chenle throws his towel over the arm of the treadmill beside him and sticks his water bottle in the holder before he goes over to the mat to do his warm-up stretches.

"Thought you didn't want to be a Ranger anymore," Chenle says. "Or you like the gym?"

"Thought you didn't want to be a Ranger either," Jeno says, pointedly ignoring the question. The answer is implied enough, everything else just secondary.

Chenle grunts, muscles straining. "Who said that?"

"You're just praying for one of those girls to die, or..?"

"You're implying they can find a co-pilot for me in the first place."

"You're implying you're actually trying."

Jeno isn't looking at him, but Chenle feels the words cut through him; straight to the core like a sword driven through. Like a fist in the gut. "I am trying."

He grunts, turning around so he's facing the wall, bracing a hand against the cool surface of the mirror and tilting his head down.

"You're not trying. If you were trying you'd be in Hong Kong. Or Tokyo. Plenty of new blood passing through."

"Oh, you know all about that, do you?" Chenle asks, and it's purposefully barbed. He knows Jeno is intentionally getting under his skin, but fuck this; he'd tried to be friendly. He doesn't need to be called out or attacked for his choices. He _is_ trying. He's in the database. He tests with every Ranger that comes through. He trained with every recruit from the Hong Kong party last year, and not a single person had even been close to successful in their levels of Drift compatibility.

"At least I'll admit it."

Chenle grunts. He finishes his stretches and almost punches the treadmill when he keys in his settings, fury flowing in his veins. "You really don't know anything about me," he says, starting with an easy jog.

"I know enough."

Jeno's voice is cool and calm. Chenle chances a glance at him and finds he's staring straight ahead, barely breaking a sweat. His expression is carefully neutral, and it infuriates Chenle, because he shouldn't be able to get under his skin this easily. He shouldn’t know how to twist the knife, not after six years apart. Eighteen-year-old Chenle is so vastly different from twenty-four-year-old Chenle, and yet Jeno reads him like an open book.

He reads him almost as well as Kun does and unbidden, a memory surfaces.

He’s in the Kwoon room at the academy. Tall ceilings, lightless windows, black sleek walls, and staves resting in their holders. Renjun slams Jaemin into the mat and grins at him, mouth full of shark’s teeth, eyes alight, touching his staff to his neck.

“I yield. Get off me,” Jaemin says. Renjun huffs, holding out a hand to pull him to his feet and dropping the staff onto the ground, his smile turning friendly.

Chenle scoops up the weapon as they vacate the space, and opposite him Kun steps onto the mat.

He’s taller than Chenle. Stronger. Bigger. A six year age difference will do that.

Chenle still knocks him to his knees in less than a minute.

There’s something beautiful about fighting with someone who knows you like this. They haven’t drifted together yet, but even so he can anticipate Kun; catch his blows, dance away, curse under his breath as Kun mirrors it back. It’s strange having someone who’s never been inside your head still know you so well. Strange how he feels the connection thrum in the air between them.

Strange when he hits the ground for the second time that it's not Kun he looks at, but Jeno, standing on the side of the ring with his head tilted slightly to the side, his gaze keen. Strange that Chenle feels a roar in his ears even as he stands up.

Stranger still that it’s _this_ memory his brain chooses to bring up while he’s running on a treadmill. The way Kun had beat him that day; over and over, their connection shaky like someone had come into Chenle’s house and rearranged all the furniture ever so slightly. He keeps hitting his hips on things that weren’t there before. Missing the simplest tells.

"What's your game?" Chenle asks, trying to drag himself back to the surface. The air in the gym is cool, and he breathes a deep lungful, everything feeling like it's stuffed with cotton wool. Everything muted, the divide between the past and present blurring into the foil of a fogged up mirror.

"Huh?" Jeno responds. It’s a less a word, more a vocalised question mark.

"Why do you care? You said we're here to do the same thing. Why are you asking me this?”

Jeno laughs, and everything sharpens into focus. “Because you were the best Ranger in our class and seeing you rotting away is depressing.”

“I _was_ the best Ranger in the class,” Chenle says. “Don’t know if I changed much since then.”

“You’re working out right now, and you’re saying you’re still the same? I know you’re in J-Tech, but you’re still making sims. You know some of them came back to Tokyo? You got Jaehyun a couple of times.”

“Was that the Hammerhead one?”

He knows that one had somehow found its way onto the internet. It was a joke: the Kaiju grew extra limbs every time you cut one off. Something born from the frustration of having to patch up a dent in Taniwha Fang that Chenle’s sure could have been prevented if he was piloting it.

“I think so.”

“Making sims is different to piloting,” Chenle says.

Like he doesn’t know it so fucking well. He can predict all the Kaiju he wants, train all the new Rangers he wants. He can fix all the wiring torn out of the joints of a Jaeger while hanging forty meters off the ground in his harness, but it’s always going to be nothing like being in the Conn-Pod. Nothing will ever compare to being the one piloting a robot the size of a skyscraper. “Kun was the right hemisphere, anyway. There’s no point in me going without him.”

 _‘I don’t like giving up control’_ is left unsaid, but it’s blatant enough. The only person he’d trusted enough to get into his brain — to slip through the walls he’s been building his entire life.

Kun was a natural Ranger. Chenle was made of thousands of hours of raw practice.

“Have you tried?”

Chenle huffs. He doesn’t answer. He just turns the speed up and takes a sip of his water.

“You’re Drift compatible with Park Jisung” is what Jeno says the next time they run into each other at the gym. They'd met outside of it of course — running into each other in the break room, and once in the halls when Jeno had been going to brush his teeth — but they'd barely exchanged more than formalities. This is the first real sentence Jeno has said to him since, well, since last time they’d been here.

It’s past midnight and Jeno is doing bench presses; muscles bulging, chest shining with sweat, stupid fucking hot in a way that seems engineered to get under Chenle’s skin.

Chenle ignores him and skips the treadmill to do dumbbell curls in the corner, but the gym is not large and even if he can’t see him, it’s impossible to avoid the grunts Jeno lets out as he lifts weights. He’s sure it’s all for show, anyway. Chenle’s personal best is definitely higher than his.

“What’s your point?”

“You said you weren’t compatible with anyone, but he’s right there.”

“Marshal Leuluai told me ‘fuck off and kindly go to hell’ if I even thought about testing with Jisung,” Chenle says, smiling at the memory. “Something about not taking away her only competent Mission Controller. And anyway, drifting isn’t just about compatibility. It’s about trust.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“I trust him with my life,” Chenle says. Honest as can be. “But I don’t trust him in my head. The handshake wouldn’t complete.”

“How are you going to say that when you haven’t even tried?”

“Did you not hear the ‘fuck off and go to hell?’. It doesn’t matter.”

“You want to get back in the Conn-pod so fucking desperately, and you won’t even try?”

“Why do you assume I’m so desperate?”

Jeno has finished his reps and is sitting on the bench, dabbing sweat from his forehead, staring at him. Chenle makes sure to flex extra hard as he curls the weight, smirking slightly when Jeno looks away in haste. At least he can win at that.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Jeno coughs.

“Okay, new question,” Chenle tries. His knuckles are white. “Why does it matter to you if I get in a Jaeger again or not? Worry about your own fucking problems. Don’t tell me it's because of my potential either. That potential is gone. There are probably forty new recruits far more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than me who are waiting to jump in a Drivesuit. No-one wants a partnerless has been.”

His tongue is a little loose, and he wishes he could take the words back the second he says them, but Jeno just cocks an eyebrow at him, all signs of being flustered gone. “You’re not a has been. Jade Hurricane had a ridiculous takedown rate, and that was two years ago. You train every day — you haven’t lost anything. Your drop rate is _still_ 99%. Valley Dancer only had a 92, Sunlight Cinder has 95 — you’re _insane_ Chenle. They still talked about you in Tokyo, even after you retired.”

Chenle huffs, ignoring the compliment. Ignoring everything else, an uncomfortable shift in his stomach like he’s standing on quicksand. A reminder that he exists amongst other people’s perceptions too, not just in his own head. What do they think of him? How do they see him now?

“I’m not drifting with Jisung,” he says. He finishes his last rep, then he adds: “Why’re you telling me to go find a co-pilot when you don’t even have one yourself, anyway? Why do you care so much about what I do?”

There’s silence for a second. Chenle puts the dumbbell down and takes a drink of water, frowning when he realises he left his towel hanging on the treadmill. To get it he has to walk past Jeno, but luckily when he does so Jeno doesn’t do anything. He just watches him with keen eyes, and it’s only when Chenle passes by again does he stand up, the two of them suddenly uncomfortably close.

Jeno is his height. He hadn’t realised, but they look each other almost directly in the eyes, and Chenle arches his heels and straightens his back just so he has something over him — just so Jeno has to crane his neck ever so slightly to stay on even footing.

“I care because you made a _choice_ to sit on your ass and do nothing,” Jeno says, and Chenle thinks he sees something flash across his face. Something stormy, the waves of the bay churning as he tumbles towards them. “I care because there are monsters coming out of the sea trying to kill us all, and you could be stopping them — but instead you’re rotting down here.”

Lightning strikes, and it scorches going down, the words tinged with a white-hot fury that churns in Chenle’s stomach, everything coalescing in two syllables he spits at Jeno. “Fuck you,” he says, and he levels Jeno’s gaze with a snarl. “You don’t know _anything_ about me.”

If Jeno is affected he doesn’t show it. His face barely moves, like Chenle had just told him something innocuous. We’re out of toothpaste. Jisung’s doing physics experiments with the pool balls again. There are gulls in the hangar.

Slight surprise. Nothing else.

“I spent a long time sparring with you,” Jeno says, steady and cool. “I know more about you than you think. Besides, I don’t have a say in the fact that I can’t get up in a Jaeger. You do.”

Chenle had all but forgotten him, more willful ignorance than anything, but those hours in the Kwoon room had come back to him fresh as spring daisies. The two of them working at it with each other — fencing foils, boxing gloves, the clatter of their staves. Whitewashed, lit by a single fluorescent. Bruises on their knuckles and sweat pouring down their chests. Blood under the skin, blooming dark red. Chenle cleaning his wounds and relishing the sting. The reminder that he was alive.

There were a lot of superstitions in the PPDC, and almost all of them involved Drift compatibility. It was supposed to be bad luck to train with someone you weren’t compatible with, and even worse luck when that person already had a pre-assigned co-pilot. A fear of moulding yourself to someone else’s signature.

Jeno must have known what people would have thought of him spending hours with Qian Kun’s co-pilot, and yet he did it anyway. Every single night, until Chenle beat Jeno as much as Jeno beat him. Until they learned each other through sheer willpower, like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

“Fuck you,” Chenle repeats, because he doesn’t want to think about it. He can’t think about it. All those dark nights, and everything that happened afterward. He can’t think about it because Jeno is wrong, anyway; Chenle doesn’t have a choice. He can’t go back. “You don’t know what it’s like to almost lose someone like that. You don’t know how it fucking feels. How could you?”

Jeno takes a step forward, and he’s right in Chenle’s personal space, so close that Chenle can count his eyelashes. His breath fans across Chenle’s face, and Chenle’s heartbeat hitches, the warmth of Jeno’s body so painfully apparent.

“No, I don’t know,” Jeno says. His voice is low, each word pointed. A thousand knives turned to Chenle, and he itches to fight. Bare handed, like they did when the night slipped away. Bruised knuckles and scraped elbows, the weight of Jeno’s body on top of his. “But you joined the Academy because you wanted to save people, didn’t you? You joined because you wanted to make a difference. No Ranger who wants anything else stays for that long. No Ranger who wants fame spends every night in the Kwoon room until his knees are purple with bruises, getting five hours of sleep just so he can be the best. He’d sit on his hackles if he got assigned Qian Kun as his co-pilot. He’d cruise by. You wanted it Chenle. Do you still want it?”

Chenle doesn’t answer. He didn’t come here to hear this. He didn’t come here for a fucking therapy session. He did his time after they pulled Kun from the sea. He doesn’t need to hear about how fucked up he is.

There is nothing slow about the way Chenle moves. There never has been. Kun was always the one to temper him, the one to reign him in. Without him in his head all his fire comes pouring out, and he almost headbutts Jeno when he kisses him.

The surprise comes when Jeno doesn’t pull away. The surprise comes when Jeno surges into him the second their lips touch. No hesitation, no pause, nothing but raw want; their teeth clacking together, Jeno’s fingers messing up his hair as he rucks his hand through it, pulling him closer, mouth open, chest heaving. Chenle curses and shoves against him, and Jeno allows it, acquiescing so, so easily; every part of him loose and free despite the livewire tension brewing in the air.

They know each other. They’ve always known each other. Sneaking out of their dorm rooms in the middle of the night, stolen ID card clutched in his fist, Jeno’s crescent moon eyes as Chenle had swiped them in.

Here Jeno lets _Chenle_ in and Chenle presses at him, taking more and more, pouring all his anger into making Jeno break before him. He shoves his thigh between Jeno’s leg and Jeno isn’t shy, he doesn’t pull back. He presses down and Chenle gasps as he feels his cock rub against him, so obviously hard it makes him lightheaded for a second, the world spinning wildly out of control.

There is nothing gentle about this. There is no exploring each other. There is Chenle pushing and Jeno matching him at every opportunity. There’s the heat of his skin, his hand slipping up the front of Chenle’s shirt.

It’s like a fight. Like the Kwoon room, the clash of the staves against each other. Jeno shoving him down. Jeno’s eyes, bright and ready. The way they learned each other, bit by bit, day by day. It’s like a dance.

Jeno’s kisses, his tongue in his mouth, the weight of his cock. His skin is hot beneath Chenle’s palm, his abs flexing with every ragged breath he takes, and Chenle feels so fucking alive it’s like he can’t breathe. Everything is sharpened, like he’s viewing it through a freshly cut prism, a million beams of light refracting in every direction, scattering across his skin as Jeno slips a hand under his waistband. He _bites_ at his bottom lip, and Chenle’s hips snap forward, his senses going haywire at the rough drag of Jeno’s fingertips against the soft skin of the seam of his thigh.

Chenle licks into Jeno’s mouth, reaching down to wrap his hand around Jeno’s wrist and push his palm flat against his cock, allowing him to feel how hard he is even through the fabric of his underwear. Jeno pants into his mouth, and there are no words exchanged. Just the slide of their lips. Just Jeno pulling back for a second to spit on his palm, eyes black as coal as he reaches into Chenle’s boxers and wraps his hand around his cock.

“Fuck,” Chenle says. It feels _good._ Scarily so, cascading all over him like sparks, scattering across the ground.

Jeno answers with another kiss, swiping his thumb across the head of Chenle’s cock, twisting his wrist and tightening his grip. Chenle's lashes flutter and he pushes his hips forward, fucking into the circle of Jeno’s hand, letting everything bleed out of him. All the tension, all the misplaced fury. Hate and desire, two sides of the same coin, spinning on its side on the tip of his tongue as he gasps, arousal burning through him.

Jeno is still watching him, his gaze laser-sharp, and with his other hand he reaches up to press his thumb down on Chenle’s lower lip. He tastes salty — sweaty — and Chenle groans. He shuts his eyes. He wonders what it would be like to push Jeno down onto his knees. He wonders what his mouth would be like around his cock.

It’s too much to want. Jeno presses his thumb into Chenle’s mouth and Chenle sucks at it, shameless, his entire body wound tight like a coil, moaning without care.

“You are so fucking annoying,” Jeno says, but there's no bite behind it. It's like the last justification of someone who has already surrendered.

“Your hand is around my cock.”

Air crackling. The strike of wood on wood, the clash of their staves, echoing back. Chenle's head slamming into the mats, pinned down.

Jeno takes his thumb out of his mouth and kisses him, absolutely furious, absolutely _burning_ with it all. His strokes speed up and everything is hot and wet, and Chenle is hurtling towards the ground, terminal velocity, rage and lust and something else that thrums through them, something he’d left on the Kwoon room floor, this mirror of their bodies, the way they move against each other. Spit on his lips, the slick slide of Jeno’s hand.

There’s a moment before it all hits him. A perfect stillness, everything frozen in time. Jeno’s eyes are dark as the midnight sky, and something curls in their depths, something that shimmers under all the lust. Silken scales, hot steam floating from the floor.

Chenle reaches out for it, and in that moment everything shatters.

Somehow nothing changes. Chenle’s not sure what he expected to change, but he thinks something _should_ have changed. Instead, Jeno treats him exactly the same; the same professional distance, the same cordial smile. He doesn’t sit at his table in the cafeteria, and they only cross paths when they absolutely have to. They don’t talk about it — they don’t really talk at all.

It’s not because Chenle is avoiding him. That’s what he tells himself, anyway. He still goes to the gym at the same time, and he still sees Jeno there. They make small talk. Jeno spots for Chenle when he does his bench presses, and if Chenle lifts more than normal then, well — Jeno doesn’t know that.

It really isn’t Chenle's fault that Jeno doesn’t have clearance to access half the Shatterdome, either. He can’t be blamed that it’s his _job_ to be working in the hangar. He’s just making sure Taniwha Fang still works. He’s just polishing its chassis. Sitting inside its empty head, fingers running over the fine patterns carved into the metal, waves and faces, identical to the pouwhenua that flank the entrance to the Shatterdome. Staring down at him with iridescent paua eyes, shouting and clatter, and he shuts his eyes and clenches his fist, feeling Ashmouth’s scales under his touch.

Everything is quiet.

Jade Hurricane wades through the Shanghai harbour with ease, the cool night air curling around her. It’s the middle of autumn and the sky is clear, a few stars winking off on the horizon, the kaleidoscopic light show of the city flanking her back.

Kun is in good spirits tonight. It comes through the neural bridge, easy as the flow of the water in the river, a brightly coloured joy that washes over him.

“Stop thinking about food,” Chenle says. Kun has been obsessed with his Mama’s steamed fish recently, and even Chenle has started to crave it; the local delicacies of Shanghai slowly being shoved out of his mind in favour of Kun’s Fujian palette.

“Sorry,” Kun says. He laughs. “I hate it when they decide to come out during dinner. It’s inconsiderate.”

“Right? Do you think we could ask nicely and they might time it better? Ask the hundred meter tall rampaging monster if it can come back later.”

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think that will work.”

The fight is easy. They engage with Ashmouth two kilometers off the coast, where the bay is still shallow. It makes it easy to maneuver, easy for them to get the monster in a grapple. Chenle cuts its tail off with a quick swing of the sword, swinging around for an uppercut, and it thrashes, body slamming into the hull with a thud of pain that resonates through Chenle’s bones.

One of the key features of the Pons system: you had to feel the Jaeger’s pain. It stopped you from being too reckless — allegedly.

Jade Hurricane brings her fist back and Chenle hits the rockets, dozens of tiny missiles exploding from the knuckles, detonating in Ashmouth’s face as it roars. It fights against their grip, but he knows Kun has it held tight, and Chenle pays it no mind as he drives his fist into its jaw, Jade Hurricane jerking forward with the force of the impact.

Kun’s approval radiates through the Drift, and Chenle grins, the rhythm of battle falling over him easy as can be. This is what it meant to be a Ranger. Complete harmony between the three of you: the Jaeger, your co-pilot, and you, the Drift singing through every part of you.

Ashmouth tears through the Conn-pod like tissue paper, a terrible screech of bent metal, a terrible roar. One moment Kun’s laughter is in his ears, light and bright, and the next, Chenle sees stars; ripped out of the Drift, the sensation like someone is tearing his spine from his skin.

Then he’s falling, falling through the floodlights, falling towards the sea.

It’s a long drop.

Chenle wakes up screaming, disoriented, his blankets wrapped around him like the walls of a coffin, the darkness of his room so absolute he thinks he’s underwater again; he thinks he’s being pulverised into a thousand tiny pieces off the coast of Shanghai. He throws everything off, shouting, and it’s only once he spreads his palms out, digging them deep into the mattress, that he reorients himself.

He’s safe. He’s in his room in the Auckland Shatterdome, and he’s safe.

Kun is safe, too.

“He’s alive,” Chenle says, out loud, even as he moves to pick up his phone and check his last message with Kun, heart racing like a bird trapped in a box, thudding against his ribcage in a desperate attempt to escape.

_Shanghai needs Rangers like you_

He turns the screen off and drops it onto the sheets, face down, covering his face with his palms and breathing in, a deep lungful that he exhales slowly. The sparrow of his heart headbutts the wall of his chest.

“Qian Kun is alive,” he repeats. “My name is Zhong Chenle. I was born in Shanghai. I am twenty-four years old. Qian Kun is alive.”

He breathes deep, digging his fingers into the meat of his thighs, focusing on the sharp sensation. Focusing on the way his breath feels flowing in and out of his lungs. One, two, the pull of the tides. One, two, the crash of the waves.

Not the sea — he can’t.

(Chenle hits the water, the Drift slipping between his fingers.)

One, two. The curl of his bicep, the strain of the weight.

One, two. The pound of his feet on the treadmill.

One, two. Jeno’s mouth on his, the pant of his breath.

He falls back down and stares at the ceiling, willing it all to go away. He doesn’t need to remember how kissing Jeno had felt. The slick slide of his hand. The heat on his skin, the way he’d stared at Chenle. The way Chenle had known, somehow, just how to meet him. It was too similar to all those nights in the Kwoon room, sharped by their years apart, shaded by something new. Playing across his mind like it's been beamed up to the jumbotron, etched in screaming colour.

Shit. _Shit_.

(Chenle hits the ground, the mat soft beneath his elbows. Jeno touches the staff to his neck.)

The flutter of his heartbeat subsides, and he scrubs his face with his hands, groaning. Thanking the fact that his room is soundproof again. The nightmares are less frequent, but they still come in waves, and he doesn’t want to wake up the whole Shatterdome with them. He’s ashamed that they’re still there. He’s ashamed he’s scared of something that never happened.

Zhong Chenle _could_ be in a Jaeger in a week — _if_ he was willing to take a psych eval.

The last time he’d done that he’d been in Shanghai, and he’d been deemed unfit for service. Not unusual for a Ranger who’d just lost their co-pilot in some form, but still something like a punch in the gut for Chenle. For the first time in his life, he’d failed.

 _Second_ , he supposes. Kun can’t walk because of the first.

"Have you been talking to Jeno?" Chenle asks, the next time he and Jisung get a day outside of the Shatterdome. They're sitting out front of a cafe on the viaduct, Jisung eating fish, Chenle stealing his onion rings. The sky is a brilliant blue and the yachts sit still in the water, sea breeze gentle, masts groaning under the weight of their limp sails. A few gulls eye their food and Chenle hisses, making a face and doing absolutely nothing to scare them away.

"Who?"

"New blood."

"Didn't know you were on a first name basis," Jisung says, pausing as he cuts a slice of fish off and pops it in his mouth.

“We were in the Academy together.”

“Ah,” Jisung says. _Ah_.

He chews for a while, and Chenle looks away, out towards the harbour, watching a couple of teenagers on their phones walk past. There’s a woman eating ice cream with a big sun hat sitting on the bench behind them, and she makes eye contact with him, causing him to hastily jerk away and look back at where Jisung is trying to decide between aioli or tomato sauce for his chips.

“He asked me if you and I were Drift compatible,” Chenle says. He doesn’t need to tell Jisung everything else that happened that day. Only the question that had started it all.

Jisung makes a noise of alarm. “We talked about the Jaegers. About what it’s like working on the Mark-Three models. He didn’t ask about you at all.”

Chenle frowns. “Not even in a roundabout way?”

“Nope. Chip?”

Chenle takes the chip from him and scoops up an unreasonable amount of sauce. “Thanks.”

So Jeno hadn’t asked. He’d intuited it, somehow. Maybe from the way he and Jisung moved together; not the kind of synchronicity that came from the codependency the Drift forced on you, but something that ran bone deep, something that came from a soul cleaved in two, one of each half flickering inside their rib cages.

He knows Jisung would be a good Ranger. He also knows Jisung doesn’t want to _be_ a Ranger: he’d rather be in the hangar. He’d rather be in LOCCENT, his special brand of brilliance bringing them home safe.

If Chenle was ever to get back in a Jaeger, he knows Jisung would be the only person he’d trust guiding him. Marshal Leuluai be damned.

He opens his mouth to say something else, but at that moment both his and Jisung’s phones start ringing, rattling against the metal of the table with a sound like a rock in a blender.

He looks down with a frown, chip still held in his fingers. “That’s not good,” Jisung says.

Really, there’s only one thing that would call them both back to the Shatterdome on their time off.

Taniwha Fang is ready to go by the time they get back, the Waititi sisters already in their Drivesuits. Jisung is called up to LOCCENT to help with the final initialisations, and Chenle follows him along. Marshal Leuluai is waiting for the both of them, and she briefs Chenle in record time.

There’s a Category Two headed towards Tokelau. Nothing too serious, but a Category Three had come out of the breach twenty minutes before, only this one went straight for the Philippines.

“Strange they’re splitting up like that,” Chenle notes. Two Kaiju emerging was rare; two headed in independent directions was even rarer.

“Agreed. It doesn’t give me a good feeling. Still, we’ll deal with that later. Conn-pod’s in place. Rangers are all suited up. How do we look, Park?”

“Relay gel has been deployed. Spinal clamp is active. Conn-Pod is in place,” Jisung says. He taps the mic in front of him. “How are we feeling Taniwha Fang?”

“Feeling pretty good, aye,” comes through the speakers. Chenle’s never been able to tell the Waititi twins apart when it’s just audio; both of them carrying the breezy, good natured accent he’s come to associate with New Zealand, laid back even as they lay their fists into whatever Kaiju decided to fuck with them. “Ready when you are, boss.”

Jisung glances back at Leuluai, who nods. On the wall behind them the war clock reads zero — lines and lines of numbers like spider’s eyes. Watching Chenle even as he takes a deep breath and tries not to remember seawater flooding his mouth.

“Initiating Neural Handshake.”

Jeno turns up five minutes after Taniwha Fang leaves the hangar. Marshal Leuluai tells Chenle to catch him up, to which Chenle protests: “Is he even allowed here? Does he have the clearance?”

He knows it’s the wrong question the second it leaves his mouth; now is not the time for banter. There's an active threat, and Marshal Leuluai stares at him. “Technician Zhong,” she says.

Chenle’s jaw snaps shut, a chill wracking through him. “Of course.”

He bows and turns around to face Jeno, who regards him with a perfectly neutral gaze: calm and collected, that kind of inhuman handsomeness that makes him seem like a statue. He’s dressed in his fancy new uniform, hair combed back, eyes glinting slightly when they make eye contact, unaffected.

Chenle doesn’t like this calm, but he supposes it’s better than Jeno goading him on, and so he purses his lips and turns around to brush past him wordlessly, pulling out a seat and sitting backwards on it beside Jisung.

Jeno follows. He’s following before Chenle even sits down, mirroring him. The chair squeaks slightly under his weight and Chenle takes a breath, the HUD of Taniwha Fang’s stats blurring in front of him like city lights in the rain.

An umbrella over his head, the steady patter of the summer rain like bird feet on a tin roof. Thud thud, the thrum of their wings. The air is thick with the smell of oil and grilled meat, and a hot wind blows, carrying voices from every direction.

It doesn’t smell like Shanghai. There are blinking LED signs and hand drawn menus, birds strung up by their feet, fish bleeding out on the ice. The crowd bustles past him and he looks up at the tops of the buildings, lifting a hand to wipe the raindrops flecked on his glasses and stepping in a puddle as he does so, reflection rippling, the whole world warping as Kun’s face comes back into view, outlined in a corona of neon.

Chenle hits the ocean’s surface like a bullet from a gun.

“Zhong?”

He blinks. Jeno is staring at him, brows knit together, worry flashing in his gaze. Tender, in a way … not in the way Chenle would like it. He’d like it if things went back to normal, because Jeno has no right to care; just like he has no right to tell Chenle he should be back in the Conn-Pod.

“Sorry.”

Chenle catches him up, his eyes firmly fixed on the HUD, and when he’s done they lapse into stillness. Jeno has no questions, and Chenle has no answers, so he lets the silence crush him. He lets the sea swallow him up.

He has to, because if he thinks about it too long he can still remember the taste of Jeno’s mouth.

Taniwha Fang dispatches the Kaiju in record time. Chenle has a habit of not sleeping when there’s an active threat on the board, and even though he retires to his room briefly to shower and change into his uniform, he’s back out in the break room to watch the live report of Baneful Queen engaging with Zallen.

It’s a beautiful fight. Baneful Queen is a mainstay of the Hong Kong Shatterdome: piloted by Xu Minghao and Wen Junhui, towering over the azure waters off the coast of Luzon with a grace that should be impossible for something her size. She collides with Zallen fist first and Chenle swears he can feel the ghost of the force — and the impact — resonate through his bones. Jisung joins him on one of the pleather chairs, and the two of them sit in silence, watching the show. Watching the speed with which Zallen crumples into the sea, the splash from its collapse like the center point of a sonic boom.

When it’s confirmed that Zallen is dead, the news report cuts to archive footage of Junhui’s academy days, and that’s when Chenle hits mute.

By all right he should be happy. He _is_ happy. There’s a delicate bubble of joy in his chest, but even as it rises it crystallises, lodging itself in the space between his throat and his clavicle, the pressure suddenly choking.

“I don’t like that,” Jisung says, after a few seconds of silence.

On the TV a twenty-year-old Junhui is waving at the camera, a shy smile plastered across his face, something roguish and untamed in the glint of his eyes. Chenle’s not sure if it’s confirmation bias or not, but he swears he can see the potential of who Junhui had become.

He wonders if that’s what people thought when they saw him, then quickly decides that avenue isn’t worth pursuing.

“It feels wrong, doesn’t it?” Chenle says. Jisung nods. The news switches to show Zallen partially submerged in the water, slumped down and starfishing out, like a shadow lurking beneath the waves, only the spikes on its back sticking above the surface.

Like hundreds of sharks, stationary in the pristine blue.

"I don't get why they split up. That's never happened before. If two Kaiju come it's always a coordinated attack, not this random shit. And a month before they were due."

"That’s what worries me,” Chenle says. "I know K-Science is tenuous at best, but they're usually not this out of sync."

"Do you think something is happening?" Jisung asks. The break room is silent, only the soft whirr of the A/C and glug of the water cooler. Only the machines. No life. Just the two of them, white light and scuffed carpet.

Chenle stands and walks over to the coffee machine, remembering how in the Academy, Jaemin used to scold him for not refilling the pot.

He pulls it out. It’s empty.

"I don't know.”

Chenle hits the water. It's like he's been smashed to pieces, the sea hard as concrete. Falling from seventy meters up, slamming through the waves like he’s piercing the crust of the Earth, like he’s a needle bending against stone, will-o-wisps dancing frantically above him. The Drift is silent, and the ocean crushes him, flooding his lungs, all consuming.

Jade Hurricane bursts into flames like a bomb going off, folding in herself, a giant falling to her knees. The salt stings at his eyes, and sinking through liquid obsidian — pressure from all sides, a breath that won’t release, a scream he can’t form — three meters below the waves, Chenle feels his world cleaved in two.

*

The sirens go off when Chenle is standing inside the powered down core of Taniwha Fang. It’s not the high pitched alarm that signals a Kaiju in their territory, but it’s a reset of the war clock all the same, droning on and on, and by the time he’s packed up his tools and climbed out onto the catwalk there’s an ache built up in his temples, dull and persistent.

He’s coated in sweat and grease, no time to shower, still in his mechanic outfit when he gets to LOCCENT. Jisung is already there. So is Jeno. He's chatting with the Waititi twins, conversation lost over the clatter of Jisung's fingers on the keyboard.

As Chenle sits down, everything goes quiet.

"There’s two Kaiju headed straight for Shanghai," Jisung says, pulling up the stats being beamed from Shanghai LOCCENT to them. "They picked up their signatures about twenty minutes ago. Marshal Kim has already deployed Sunlight Cinder and Crystal Sage. Time to the site is estimated at four minutes."

Two Kaiju. Chenle takes a breath, pulling his seat up beside Jisung’s. Jeno joins them, and Chenle spares at glance at him, offering a cursory smile.

It quickly becomes apparent that the fight is not well matched. Within five minutes Sunlight Cinder is missing an arm, knocked off by a plethora of blade-like appendages that have extended from the end of one of the Kaijus' tails. It wields them like a whip, snapping at Crystal Sage even as it's grappling with the larger of the Kaiju: an ugly fuck sweating acid from its hideously oversized pores.

"They need backup," Jeno says, as he watches Sunlight Cinder nearly lose balance. His voice is grave.

Chenle swallows. He has his audio feed swapped to Shanghai's radio, and they're saying the same thing. Hurried sentences, shouting in Mandarin. PPDC protocol was generally to keep comms in English, but when things get dicey, command tended to default to what they knew best. English was a bitch, and saving lives was made easier when you weren't struggling with the fucking language.

"They're calling in Hong Kong and Tokyo," Chenle says, translating. He doesn’t know if Jeno speaks Mandarin. Probably not. “Hong Kong can’t deploy.”

"Baneful Queen is still damaged," Jisung offers. "Both of Crimson Shadow’s Rangers are on paid leave."

"So it’s just Tokyo? What about Vladivostok?"

Jisung frowns, bringing his hand up to his ear, no doubt swapping his comms channel. On the screen Crystal Sage stumbles backwards, its grapple broken, the acidic Kaiju rounding on Sunlight Cinder with its fangs bared.

"Oh, shit.”

Later Chenle would say he swore it happened in slow motion, but presently it happens in a fraction of a second. The acidic Kaiju opens its mouth and roars, the cam from Crystal Sage only offering a half view. Sunlight Cinder turns to block it, and as it does the Kaiju it had been fighting with brings its tail up.

It cuts through the Conn-Pod like a hot knife through butter, tearing out the right half with one swipe, losing its left arm in the process as, even wounded, Sunlight Cinder drives a plasma blade to the hilt through its limb. There’s a clatter of yelling on the Shanghai comms. Part of Sunlight Cinder’s shoulder crumples, but it still stands, and Crystal Sage gets back to its feet, rocket bays opening up to fire a salvo at the blade-tailed Kaiju.

“Did they just lose a Ranger?” Jeno asks.

“Signs are flat,” Jisung says. “Maybe.”

Crystal Sage smashes its fists into the blade-tailed Kaiju, slamming punches into it again and again, Sunlight Cinder joining in with the fight. It looks hopeful for a second; the blade tailed Kaiju trips backward, slamming into the sea, but even as it does so the acidic Kaiju comes at Crystal Sage’s side, far too fast, far too strong.

The acidic Kaiju has claws the size of a bus, and each of them tears through Crystal Sage’s armour, ripping her to pieces, the holes she blasts in its armour just causing more and more acid to leak out. Sunlight Cinder finishes off the blade tailed Kaiju with a stab through the stomach, but as she rounds to help Crystal Sage it’s too late; Crystal Sage goes down, crumpling, the open side of her Conn-Pod on full display, vitals going haywire as seawater floods through her open circuitry.

Sunlight Cinder is still standing. Half her systems are broken, readings either flat or spiking like a seismograph in an earthquake — but she’s still standing. She re-engages, one-handed, a full bodied punch that resonates even through the camera. The acidic Kaiju screeches and turns on her, and the sea boils.

“She can’t win,” Jisung says, as they watch the two of them struggle. It doesn’t shatter the tension in the room — rather adds to it. Thick, like another layer painted over the top. “Tokyo is sending Moon Hydra.”

“That’s Jaemin’s Jaeger,” Jeno says. It’s out loud, but it’s not directed at anyone. Chenle glances at him and his face is blank.

“They’ll get it done,” he says. Jeno turns to him, incredulous, like he hadn’t even realised Chenle was in the room.

The war clock flashes at zero.

Sunlight Cinder goes down eventually — falling prostrate into the shallows, a single escape pod ejected. The acidic Kaiju doesn’t even bother looking; as soon as she falls it turns north, dead fish rising to the surface behind it, sea steaming.

The recovery team reaches the downed Jaegers at the same time Moon Hydra engages with the acidic Kaiju, the two of them clashing in the middle of the Yangtze river. Chenle doesn’t bother watching the fight. There’s no excitement in bitterness. No joy in mourning.

Han Dong is pulled out of the escape pod coated in blood, comatose, near drowning. Neural overload — she'd been solo piloting for at least twenty minutes. Her co-pilot had been torn from the Conn-Pod by the initial strike. Her body has yet to be recovered.

The news report shows a video of Crystal Sage falling into the water. Both her pilots’ life signals had gone flat before she'd even hit the surface. Neither of them are recovered, either.

There's hope, and then there's foolhardiness. There's hope, and then there's accepting the fact that they just lost three — maybe even four — Rangers.

LOCCENT is silent. Jeno reaches out and fits his hand into Chenle's and for once, Chenle doesn't pull away.

The next few days pass in a hushed haze. Crystal Sage is hauled from the sea, Conn-Pod split straight down the middle, wiring torn from her chest like stuffing from a teddy bear. She's barely recognisable as a Jaeger and there's no doubt she's headed for Oblivion Bay. Sunlight Cinder fares a little better; she’s moved back to Shanghai for repairs, most of her damage surface level, save for the missing arm.

The situation in Shanghai had been near catastrophic. Moon Hydra had killed the acidic Kaiju — now creatively named Acidtooth — at the mouth of the Yangtze River, but in the time it had taken Moon Hydra to get there Acidtooth had ravaged the coastline, ripping through the wetlands and destroying most of east Pudong; contaminating Dishui Lake, pulverising Lingang and tearing the airport to shreds. Its corpse had fallen on land, Kaiju Blue and acidic sweat seeping into the dirt; the cleanup crews were working overtime, though there was no doubt the earth was effectively salted — nothing would grow.

He supposes they’re lucky; it hadn’t reached the city proper. A small blessing. Something bright, flickering amongst the overwhelming darkness.

Chenle is called into the Marshal’s office on Monday. He hasn’t left the Shatterdome all week; mostly due to the reporters that seem to be milling about the entrance all hours of the day. They’re not camping out, not the way they had after Ashmouth’s attack, but he gets the sense that they’re out for blood. The PPDC losing three pilots in one day was unprecedented, unheard of since the early days of the war, back when the Jaegers were rustbuckets held together by prayers and pseudoscience.

When he gets to the office he’s still dressed in his mechanics dregs. Jeno is in the office, too. He’s wearing civilian clothes — shorts and a muscle shirt. His hair is wet — Chenle realises he’d been swimming.

“Good to see you,” he says. Chenle gives him a tight lipped smile and takes the offered seat beside him without replying.

“Thank you for both coming,” Leuluai starts. She rests her hands on the desk. Voice rough, skin wan, heavy rings under her eyes, the light of her laptop making her appear even more artificial. Losing Rangers was inevitable, but it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt every single time. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this because frankly, I’m pissed about it, but I just got off the phone with Marshal Kim. You’re being transferred. Both of you.”

“What?” Chenle says. “Where?” Jeno asks, speaking far louder. They both glance at each other.

“Shanghai,” Chenle answers. He turns to Marshal Leuluai again. “Why? They can’t just transfer me. No-one asked me anything.”

“They can and they will. This one’s from higher up.” Her mouth is a thin line. Beside him, Chenle hears Jeno mutter ‘Shanghai’ under his breath. “I don’t have a say in it. As for why, well. Sunlight Cinder needs repairs. Vladivostok sent down Valley Dancer last month. Iron Witch has been in stasis for years. Budget cuts haven’t helped, but Shanghai needs engineers. They need everyone they can.” Marshal Leuluai takes a breath. “Especially recognisable faces. We’re teetering on the brink, as it is. And besides, I think you know why they want you. There are two empty Mark-5s sitting in that hangar.”

He knows. He’d known as soon as she’d said he was being transferred. There were plenty of engineers they could call through, but Chenle wasn’t just J-Tech.

“I’m not a Ranger,” Chenle says. “You can’t just send me away. What the fuck?”

“It’s not my order,” she says.

“What about—” Chenle starts, though he’s cut off as she fixes him with a stare.

“Your flight is tomorrow morning. Unless you have further _conducive_ questions, I suggest you start packing.”

“You did this,” Chenle says. His room is near stripped bare, walls clean, laptop open on the table. On the screen Kun’s pixelated shoulders rise and fall in a shrug.

“I didn’t do anything. Marshal Kim has wanted you back since you left.”

“Oh, did he? It only took three dead Rangers,” Chenle says. He’s angry. Angry that his delicate peace has been disturbed, angry that _Jeno_ is being pulled back with him. Angry that someone else has made this choice for him. He's not ready. “What makes you even think I _can_ pilot? What makes you think I want to? I don’t want to go back.”

“Chenle," Kun says. His voice is soothing, and Chenle has to shut his eyes, because he knows if he sees Kun’s face he'll fold in an instant. Their connection is dead at this point — only the tiniest press at the edge of his mind — but Kun knows him inside and out.

They still have each other's mannerisms. Kun laughs like Chenle. Chenle will catch himself falling into Kun's speech patterns, and wrenching himself out of them is almost impossible. He still craves steamed fish. He still craves steak, a dish he'd been indifferent to before the Drift had filled every corner of his mind. He remembers places he’s never been to. River soil, mountain tops, something sonorous that echoed in his bones. Kun would always be there. There was no changing it.

"Please don't," Chenle says. He knows what he'll tell him, too. He can't hide. He's changed a lot in the past two years; he's changed a lot since he hit the ocean, seventy meters up, sea swallowing him. There are still some things that always stay the same.

“Shanghai misses you," Kun says. Straight to the core, cut clean out of him, glimmering like a diamond. "Come home.”

"This is so fucking lame," Jisung says. Chenle is jammed against his back, the same way they used to lie when his nightmares were unbearable and Jisung suggested Chenle just sleep in his bed, save the trek down the halls. Face pressed into his hair, Jisung's hands tangled with his.

"I don't want to go," Chenle says. He keeps repeating it — like it’s an incantation — if he says it enough then maybe he can change the path he’s on. Maybe it won’t come true.

"I don't want you to go, either. I can't believe they only gave you a day."

"Shanghai is undefended," Chenle says. "And PPDC favour is currently…"

"Bad," Jisung finishes. "I know. I wish they'd let me go with you."

"No you don't," Chenle says. Jisung's hair smells as generic as can be — five dollar Garnier Fructis, washed fresh this morning. Chenle inhales in a lungful and breathes out slowly. "You'd melt. Shanghai is hell in summer. You already complain enough here."

"I'm from Seoul," Jisung whines. "The summers there are far worse than they are here. I just don't like heat."

"You should request to go to The Icebox then."

"And work with the Americans? I'd rather be a trainer."

"Kodiak Island isn't exactly far."

"I know," Jisung says. He squeezes Chenle's hands again. "Trust me, I know. I don't hate it here, it's just. Well, yeah. I don't want you to go, Chenle."

Two boys on a bed. Two men on a bed, he supposes, though something rings strange about that. There has always been an ageless quality to his and Jisung's relationship, like two years really meant two hundred. Like they'd always known each other. He hates that Jeno was right; he and Jisung would make a good pair. But he also knows himself, and there are some things Jisung could never see. Shapes that lurked and twisted.

Pursuer making landfall in Shanghai. Chenle, running to the basement of his high school. Frantically calling his mother, but there was no reception in the bunker, and around him, all the other kids were doing the same. Sobbing. Shaking.

Time passed differently underground.

Time passed differently when you had no-one left.

Time passed differently on the Kwoon room floor. Only half lit shadows. Only the ache in his bones. Only Jeno.

He remembers his first month in Auckland. How he'd scream and thrash so bad in his sleep that he'd draw blood, nails digging into Jisung's arms in a death grip.

The third time it had happened Jisung had tugged him to the bathroom and gently helped him wash the blood from under his nails, the sleeves of his t-shirt dotted with red. They’d stood together in front of the mirror, naked white lighting, shoulder to shoulder, and Chenle had sobbed.

Jisung had sung to him, a lullaby in Korean Chenle didn't understand, his low voice like the gentle lap of the tides at the docks. Even as he'd clipped Chenle's nails and helped him file down the sharp edges. There was no shortage of songs in his repertoire, and though he was shy to share, he still shared. A recurring theme. He liked to hide, but Chenle made it okay.

' _I'll be here for as long as you need me,_ ' he'd told Chenle. Sitting on his bed together, hand in hand.

(Everything is different when you have no-one left.)

"It's okay," Chenle says. He runs his free hand over the scars on Jisung's bicep, tiny raised sickles, crescents like the waning moon. Marks of days gone by. "I'll be safe. You stay safe, too."

"You told me you wouldn't be a Ranger unless I was Mission Control."

"And I won't.”

“Don’t,” Jisung says. “I mean. Do. I mean, no — don’t hold yourself back for me, Chenle.”

“I’m not holding myself back.”

“If you say no because of me, you are.”

“Jisung…”

“It’s okay. It’s always been temporary. You said it yourself — being in a Jaeger was the only time you felt alive.”

His heart is glass, brittle. Fluttering in his chest with hummingbird wings. All the anger stripped from his bones, and he’s pulled back to when he was just a teenager; when he stepped out onto Kodiak Island and saw snow for the first time in his life. Drifting down from the sky like ash, stark white against the black of his jacket sleeves.

Jisung squeezes his hand, voice warm and low. “Go home, Chenle.”


	2. Chapter 2

Pudong International Airport is still shut, and there’s no direct route from New Zealand. Their flight reroutes through Hong Kong instead, the sky pale grey, waters of the harbour limp and swollen with boats, the imposing bay doors of the Shatterdome standing out against the cliff face. Their transit is only for an hour and half — Chenle disembarks with Jeno’s hand on the small of his back, sleeping pills still heavy on his senses. By the time he’s back on the plane it’s drizzling and near dark, city lights winking, the air dry and cool.

“Do you need a blanket?” Jeno asks. Their seats are beside each other — Chenle takes the window, planning on sleeping for the remainder of their meager flight north.

“I’m okay,” Chenle says. He’s wearing a jacket over his t-shirt — not particularly warm, but warm enough he thinks he’ll be fine for the flight.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Chenle says. Rain dots the window, warping the image outside. A crumpled polaroid, colours running all wrong.

 _Come home, Chenle_.

Jeno rests a hand on his knee — gentle — and squeezes. Chenle glances back at him and finds his eyes calm and his smile soft. He reaches out and covers Jeno’s hand with his and lets it rest there for a second, warmth on warmth.

“Thanks Jeno,” he says.

Jeno nods. “Any time.”

When he wakes up there’s a blanket thrown across his knees. Shanghai is gloomy and sour, almost monochromatic, late night blue, only the red and yellow of the city lights smeared through the rainfall. Chenle slumps against Jeno as they walk through the cluttered terminal, wheeling his suitcase behind him, sluggish and tired.

The crowd outside the Shatterdome is massive. Reporters in raincoats, microphones shoved their way, winking reflections off the camera lenses. Here Chenle stands tall despite his exhaustion; moisture beading on the arms of his jacket, sneakers soaked. He knows he has a part to play. He’s not the type to be on billboards selling soft drinks but regardless, it’s his job to look good. Public favour means more sway when it comes to the powers that be — and the powers that be pay his salary. The powers that be keep the Jaegers running.

Chenle knows the game. He knows how to play it.

It seems like everyone at the gate knows what’s happening, too: Shanghai is looking for new Rangers. Before they’d left Auckland Chenle had read an article that had mentioned they weren’t the only ones being flown in; Anchorage’s Mark Lee was inbound, as was famed ‘Hong Kong Hotshot’ Wong Vivi. Vladivostok had sent one of their best Drift Technicians — Jung Sungchan — and multiple recruits that were apparently big news to the reporter and meant absolutely nothing to Chenle.

Regardless, everyone wants his opinion on it.

“Zhong Chenle!” someone shouts. He turns away, huddling under the umbrella, a few raindrops dripping from the edge of the clear webbing hitting his sleeves. The floodlights in the front yard of the Shatterdome are like a hundred moons, shining waxen circles onto the muddy gravel, and even as they present their IDs at the gate there're reporters behind them asking for comments.

“Keep walking,” he says to Jeno.

“I know,” Jeno says. His ID card is around his neck, photograph obviously taken when he was a cadet, baby face still not quite filled out. “I don’t want to be out here either. It’s fucking cold.”

“Where the hell is the greeting party?” Chenle grumbles. The last time he’d come here they’d flown him in on a helicopter. Having to fight his way through the press to get into the front door was less than savoury.

As it turns out the greeting party is inside; past the blast doors, through a long corridor that bursts out onto a catwalk overlooking the hangar. The sheer _noise_ of the Shanghai Shatterdome slams into him, and it’s _then_ that it hits Chenle. It’s then that he realises he’s back home. Staring up at the Jaegers, their gleaming chassis being scaled by crews shouting at each other in Chinese, sparks cascading through the air as they work to repair the various injuries torn through their bodies.

Even looking at them he feels foreign. That’s his job — he’s J-Tech. He’s been the one on the catwalk countless times, and yet being back here it’s like his mind has instantly skipped backward.

Jeno nudges him, and he snaps back. Standing up straight, turning as he hears his name called.

“Zhong Chenle!” He’d know that voice anywhere. “Lee Jeno!”

Chenle’s heart does something funny when he sees Kun. A swoop and a drop, fluttering inside his chest. There’s a sharp difference between his grainy face on Chenle’s phone and him being live and in front of him; Chenle’s made aware, again, of their height difference. He’s made aware of how much Kun seems to have aged over the past few years. He’s dressed in his uniform: a set of unfurled wings on his breast, his ID pinned to his belt. He wheels his way towards them and grins, bowing when he gets close.

“Come on in,” he says. “Sorry I couldn’t give you the VIP greeting. It’s been so busy around here lately. Having to choose all the candidates for the trials and getting them in has been like trying to herd cats, we really don’t have the transportation to get you all down here, so it’s good to see the both of you made it. Qian Kun, by the way.”

“I know,” Jeno says. “We were in the Academy together.”

“Of course.” Kun offers him a bright smile. “Thought you might not recognise me. Things have changed a bit.”

“New haircut, right?”

There’s a pause as a veritable fireworks show of sparks cascades off the side of one the Jaegers. Jeno lets out a whistle.

“You like that?” Kun says. He stares up at the closest Jaeger, proud. It’s bright red, chunks of its armour missing, a huge hole in its side like a gaping maw, broken teeth of electrical wires sticking out at odd angles. Chenle doesn’t recognise it. “Blood Sister,” Kun offers. “We have four Jaegers currently undergoing repairs, plus command says they have another Mark-5 being shipped out soon. Nevermind we don’t have pilots for any of them, but that’ll change soon. Which, speaking of, Marshal Kim wants you to know trials start at seven tomorrow.”

Chenle’s stomach lurches. His skin is still damp from the rain. He wants to go back outside. Sit on the docks for a while, maybe. Feel it lash against his skin, the way the water used to run down Jade Hurricane’s armour.

“Are we under consideration?” Jeno asks. They take a left turn at Blood Sister’s feet, heading towards a wide corridor filled with traffic, one of the arteries leading away from the Shatterdome’s heart towards the living quarters.

“Yes,” Kun says. In the flashing lights of the hallway Chenle realises his wheelchair is a deep green. Metallic, glimmering. He wonders if it was the same paint they used on Jade Hurricane’s hull. His throat tightens at the thought, like there’s a little piece of her still out there. Like Kun still holds her close, too. “Both of you. You’re being fast tracked. Trials first, paperwork second. Probably not strictly to protocol, but we don’t have time to go through anything else. We need Rangers on the ground now. Two double events in as many months doesn’t bode well.”

“I didn’t come here to be a Ranger,” Chenle says, flat. Kun doesn’t stop moving. Neither does Jeno.

“And your presence will still be expected,” Kun says.

He doesn’t want to do this in front of Jeno. He thinks Kun knows that, too. He can’t explain all the fear that clutches at his bones; he can’t explain that there’s still a part of him at the bottom of the sea. He can’t — well. He just can’t.

He bites his lip. He takes a breath. He can still throw his fights. He can still throw his psych eval.

“Of course,” he says. He smiles, polite. “I’ll see you there.”

He knows he isn’t fooling anyone.

The Kwoon Combat room is packed when Chenle arrives the next morning at what he thought was an early hour. There's easily thirty hopefuls milling about, and whatever trainer is overseeing them hasn't even arrived yet.

He claims a tiny spot alongside the weapons racks and starts on his stretches, forgoing any hope of being able to warm up properly.

The Shanghai Kwoon room is _huge,_ at least compared to Auckland. It's divided into multiple rooms; smaller practice rooms for paired Rangers to brush up, and a much larger main practice space. The mat space in the main room seems more suited for rhythmic gymnastics than sparring, and the array of weapons presented is probably only rivaled by those collected at the Academy itself; it's well equipped and well maintained, not a weapon missing, no scars in the wood of the staves.

The door opens and a hush falls over the room, everyone standing to attention as Head Trainer Wu, Marshal Kim and Trainer Lu enter the Kwoon room. The mat is cleared in an instant, the crowd parting like the Red Sea to allow the three of them to cross to the raised plinth at the far end of the room.

There’s little speech. Little fanfare, beyond this:

“If you’re in this room, then the PPDC thinks you are the best. It’s up to you to prove it. Good luck.”

Chenle pulls the blow, staff stopping a few centimeters from Mark’s forehead. Mark’s eyes cross as he stares at the staff before Chenle pulls it back and relaxes his stance.

“Four-two,” Chenle says. He glances up at Trainer Lu, who purses his lips and leans over to whisper in Head Trainer Wu’s ear. Chenle tilts his head to the side and looks back to Mark, who gives him a grin.

“Guess you beat me,” he says with a shrug. “Better luck next time, dude.”

He pats Chenle on the shoulder as he passes back into the crowd and Chenle nods, offering him a smile he hopes is easy. He and Mark had started out well, trading wins, nearly perfectly matched until Chenle had caught the upper hand and proceeded to land hit after hit on Mark.

A shame, really. He liked Mark. He had a sweet boyish smile and a kind of homegrown charm to him. After his extremely public split from his co-pilot there’d been rumours he’d retired, so it was good to see him here, still fighting.

“Next up, please,” Trainer Lu calls out. “Lee Jeno!”

Chenle freezes, eyes sliding from Mark’s retreating back to where Jeno pushes his way through the crowd.

Of course. He hadn’t even thought about it, but of course. They were testing those who had trained with Mark Four model Jaegers together first, which meant Jeno would have come up at some time or another. Despite his presence in the room the entire time, it’s only when he steps onto the mat that Chenle registers the reality of it all.

It’s only when he steps onto the mat that Chenle realises he already knows the outcome of this fight. Why wouldn’t he? He’s done it thousands of times.

Chenle readies his stance. He takes a breath and meets Jeno's eyes.

"Don't go easy on me," Jeno says.

Chenle smiles. "Wouldn't dream of it."

His staff slams into Jeno's, a quick strike parried with ease. Jeno gives him an enigmatic smile and holds his ground, waiting for Chenle to pull his staff back to his side before he swings — and then it begins.

They flow like water. Hard and fast, quick strikes, the ease of their back and forth so simple it's like breathing for Chenle. A conversation spoken only in the language of their bodies.

 _One._ Jeno taps his chest.

 _One - One._ Chenle pulls his strike just before it collides with Jeno's neck.

 _Two_ \- _One._ Jeno feints and follows through at the last second, the weight of the blow stinging when he hits Chenle in the side.

"Can't believe that worked," Jeno says.

"Pull your blows," Chenle says, because nothing Jeno does in the Kwoon room is ever an accident.

“Just giving you motivation.”

Jeno grins and Chenle returns it, because this is what it's all about. This is battle. This is more than just sparring — this is something that sinks into his bones. The dance of their bodies, the heat of his blood thrumming beneath his skin. Something wire tight and resonant, a note teased from a violin, and the clatter of wood on wood is like a thunderclap, a frantic drumbeat leading them to war.

Chenle beats back Jeno, catching every feint with the middle of his staff, dancing away from a sweeping blow and spinning through another, jumping, a full turn to tap Jeno ever so lightly on the back.

 _Two - Two_.

"Show off," Jeno says.

"You gotta let me have fun."

Crack. Sinuous, effortless, a snake through sand, but with all the power of a storm. Jeno moves, and Chenle is moving in time with him. Slipping back on the mat, dancing, still, and there's nothing else in the world but the two of them. They're back in Kodiak in the dead of night, in the midst of the Alaskan winter, only the floodlights in the yard, only the blizzard howling outside, only the snap of blow after blow that doesn't quite land.

Chenle dodges, bringing the staff close to his body and conserving his momentum as he leaps, airborne, parrying and carrying through the force of the blow to come out of the spin with his back to Jeno, one hand on the floor and the other holding his staff to point right between Jeno's eyes.

A gasp ripples through the room.

_Two-Three._

A second of silence, and then Jeno knocks him off his feet.

_Three-Three_

Chenle rolls over, vaulting himself to his feet and coming swinging, every part of him _singing._ It's like he's been living in darkness for the past two years; like he's been swimming in tar for so long he's forgotten what it's like to be on land.

He's forgotten what it's like to fight.

Everything else was just warm-up. This is it. This is where it all begins. This is the two of them, knife's edge, perfectly balanced. Jeno ducks under a blow and tries to sweep Chenle's feet out with a kick, but Chenle is already airborne. He brings his staff down and Jeno rolls out of it, springing to his feet and coming back with an uppercut. It whizzes past Chenle's face and he laughs, countering, blocked, forced on the defensive as Jeno comes at him with a flurry of blows.

It's beautiful. He's alive. He's so fucking alive. The way he feels each move, the way he anticipates it; using the full extent of the space, neither of them holding back.

How wonderful it is to know someone like this.

Chenle sees the opening as Jeno comes at him. Holding his ground. Staff up. Parry the blow. Counter. Downward strike. Leap back, now up. Jeno dances back and Chenle follows, using his bodyweight as momentum. Hooking the end of his staff under Jeno’s and pulling him down and over.

He flips and slams into the mats, and somehow Chenle ends up on his back. Somehow Jeno is on top of him, the length of his staff pressed against his neck.

_Four - Three_

Chenle's chest heaves, sweat coating every inch of his body, his breath ragged. Jeno’s face is bright red with exertion, and then he breaks into a grin, ear to ear, moving his staff away from Chenle’s throat, extending his arm to the side and dropping it to the ground, each move well telegraphed. He climbs off Chenle and holds his hand out and Chenle takes it, letting Jeno pull him to his feet, something effervescent bubbling in his stomach.

"Well done," Head Trainer Wu says, and Chenle suddenly remembers where he is. This isn't a spar. This is Shanghai, and that means: "You're Drift compatible."

Kun is waiting for him outside the rec room, an uncanny smile on his face. Word travels fast in the Shatterdome, and he blocks Chenle’s path with his chair as Chenle tries to push past, grinning even wider when Chenle sighs.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Chenle says.

Kun ignores him. “Congratulations," he says. "I hear your Drift test is tomorrow.”

“The PPDC seem to be determined to inflict as much torture on me as possible,” Chenle says, clenching his hand against the steel of the door then letting go.

After he and Jeno had sparred he’d immediately been called down to command to have his tests checked up on, and once it was confirmed they were up to date (he curses himself for that — it had seemed a good idea at the time) had had his Drift simulation date set. It all had none of the marks of bureaucracy he was used to; a fast track straight into the process of getting the two of them into a Jaeger.

Forty-eight hours ago he'd still been in Auckland. Twenty-four hours ago he'd been on a plane. Twelve and he'd been watching the raindrops run down the window of their PPDC provided transport as he was taken to the Shatterdome.

Now he was being told he had a new co-pilot.

After confirmation of the time for the simulation tomorrow, there'd been a brief discussion with Marshal Kim and Vladivostok’s transfer Drift Technician — Jung Sungchan, who spoke with a slight darkness in his accent, like the Russian cold had been infused in his blood — he’d been set free.

It had been frustrating, in a way. Frustrating because the second he'd stepped onto the mat he'd known that this would be the outcome. Frustrating because he'd still gone through with it, because something had called out to him and he'd known in his _bones_ that this was where he wanted to be. It wasn't even a conscious thought.

He'd just stood opposite Jeno and fallen into it. Like everything else about being a Ranger; it was all instinctual. Muscle memory down to the core, night after night after night, all their own doing.

Now he's determined to beat the shit out of a punching bag in hopes it will do something to calm the whirlpool of emotions currently taking up residence in his chest.

“You and Jeno have made quite a fuss,” Kun says.

No such fucking luck, of course.

"Yeah?"

Kun backs up and starts to head down the corridor. Chenle considers not following him, but he supposes he should. He jogs for a second to catch up, then slows down to match Kun’s pace.

“You put on a show," Kun says, no acknowledgement of the fact Chenle had lagged behind, even though he’d surely noticed. "Everyone seems to be talking about you and Jeno. You’ve managed to even outshine Mark Lee.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Chenle says, which is true. He knows he’d had a bit of a reputation for being a showboat in his early days, but he truly hadn’t intended to show off with Jeno. It had just felt right to fight him, and he’d let his body decide the rest.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that.”

“And I mean it. I still don’t want to pilot. Especially with him.”

"Yet you're here and you put on a performance like that."

"I don't know why."

Kun huffs. They stop outside the elevator and he reaches up to press the up button. "You know as well as I do that being a Ranger is about the subconscious as much as the conscious," he says. He picks at the arm of his wheelchair and sighs, looking back up at Chenle. "And I think you know what happened in that room. I did always wonder about you two at the academy … what could have been if you hadn't met me."

It makes something buzz in Chenle's stomach, a funny taste at the back of his throat. "Yeah?"

Kun smiles at him, enigmatic as always. "I guess we'll find out."

“Kun,” Chenle says as the elevator bell rings. “I don’t know if I can.”

The door slides open and there’s a pause as the person inside exits. Kun enters and Chenle follows. He presses the button for the third floor and the doors slide shut.

Kun’s room is larger than Chenle’s; larger than almost anyone’s, he’d guess, mostly because of the accommodations that had been installed to make up for his disability. It’s homier than it had been when Chenle had lived with him: photos on his desk, neat stacks of paper, postcards from all around the Pacific Rim stuck up at what amounts to stomach level for Chenle. There are a few jackets hanging off various surfaces, but otherwise everything is orderly. Kun always had nagged him to keep clean. Chenle had never listened, either.

Kun shrugs his jacket off and drops it on his bed. Chenle drags a seat out from the corner and brushes the dust off of it, sitting beside his desk, pausing when he sees one of the frames.

It’s Chenle. Chenle and Kun, standing at what he recognises as the foot of Jade Hurricane. Both of them in their PPDC uniforms, arms slung over each other’s shoulders. He can’t be older than nineteen — bright eyed, smiling so big his teeth are showing.

His chest pangs. He looks away, straight to Kun and says: “I can’t let anyone in my head again.”

If he tells the truth, will Kun stop this? Will they cancel the Drift trial? Will they send him back to Auckland, pack his bags and let him slip into the shadow again?

“I can’t hurt anyone again, Kun. Not after you.”

“Oh, Chenle,” Kun says. His shoulders slump and he reaches out, laying a hand on Chenle’s knee. “You didn’t hurt me. I knew what I was doing every time I got up in that Jaeger. We both knew it was always a risk. Any Ranger would be stupid to think anything else.”

“I can’t stop dreaming about it. I can’t stop wondering what if you had died, or if you had never surfaced,” Chenle swallows, balling his hands into fists. “I wish it was me, sometimes. I don’t understand why it wasn’t.”

“Chenle,” Kun says. “It’s not your fault. There was nothing either of us could have done.”

“You don’t know that,” Chenle says. “If I’d been faster, or if I’d noticed, or—”

Kun takes his hands in his. “Slow down,” he says. “Piloting a Jaeger is two people. It’s always been two. Everything shared. The good and the bad. You can’t shoulder that blame. It’s unfair. Ashmouth was just faster than us.”

Everything about Kun is achingly familiar. Fragments of the Drift, things that can’t be eroded by the passage of time. The parts of him that blur when Chenle stares at him, like even if they haven’t shared a Conn-Pod in two years he’ll always carry Chenle around with him. It’s natural, incidental. A consequence of all this. The Drift never forgets. They’ll never forget. They can grow, but the seeds are still there.

They’re a part of each other.

“I could have been better,” Chenle says. “I can’t hurt someone again. I’m not ready.”

“If you weren’t ready, you know you wouldn’t have stepped onto that mat,” Kun says. “Don’t forget I know you, Chenle.”

“I’m not,” he says. It feels like a lump of coal in his throat; something that by now it should have been hardened into a diamond, or something more usable. Not fuel for the fire. Not something to destroy him.

Then again, Chenle has always lived to destroy. Kun was the balance to his firecracker; the steady Earth under his feet.

“What if everything _does_ go okay?” Chenle whispers, and this is where it grips him. Iron talons, bird of prey, blood drawn. Offered up and bared to see as a living sacrifice. “What if all this was for nothing? I’ve been afraid of nothing. I can’t replace you, Kun.”

“You’re not replacing me,” Kun says. “You will _always_ be my co-pilot. We are still Drift compatible. Just because half of Jade Hurricane is at the bottom of the sea, doesn’t mean she wasn’t ours. You getting into another Jaeger doesn’t erase all the drops we shared. It doesn’t erase all the Kaiju we killed.”

He takes Chenle’s hands in his, and Chenle stiffens, just for a second.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen until it does, okay?” Kun rubs his thumbs over the back of Chenle’s hands. “You can’t make up all these scenarios in your head and decide they’re true. You are an _incredible_ Ranger Chenle, and Jeno will be, too.”

“He’s not you,” Chenle says. He swallows. What if he rips Kun out? What if Kun’s _gone_ — discarded to the side, replaced by Jeno. Worn over. It doesn’t matter that Kun is alive. Chenle has parts of him no-one else will ever have. He can’t risk losing that. Jade Hurricane is gone. He can’t bury her like this.

“Exactly,” Kun says. “He’s not me. You aren’t replacing me Chenle. You’re moving forward. It’s what we all have to do. I will _always_ be here, no matter what. Don’t hold yourself back. Get out there and do what you were made to do.”

The test Drift takes place in one of the older labs, obvious marks of whatever deranged K-Science had occurred beforehand still left on the benches. There are a few posters on the walls and the cords plugged in look like Kaiju guts, folding back and forth over each other in a veritable snakepit that Chenle steps over upon his entry.

He’d almost faked illness; had been as close as it could get to buying some cheap and probably dodgy pills to make him throw up just so he could get out of this, but his lack of actual cash had stopped the deal from going through, and maybe that was the right choice.

Maybe Kun was right. Some part of him still wants to be a Ranger.

Chenle swallows and purges the doubt from his mind.

Jeno is already here, standing on the other side of the room and nodding along to a doctor who speaks in hushed tones. Jeno and he are both in their Drivesuits, and Chenle tries as hard as he can to ignore the way the armour seems to accentuate Jeno's whip-thin waist.

He's saved by Marshal Kim, who calls him over. "This is Jung Sungchan," he says, gesturing to a doe-eyed man in a dress shirt and jeans. "One of Vladivostok's best. We're lucky to have him. He'll be your Drift tech today."

Sungchan gets up from his chair and bows. Chenle returns the gesture.

“Nice to meet you. How is it up in Russia these days?” he asks.

Sungchan shrugs. “We are doing well. Lots of snow, but what else do you expect from Russia in the winter, right?”

“Right,” Chenle says. He flashes him a smile. His Academy days had been marked by endless snow, and the joy of it had quickly worn off when he realised it meant he could never go outside without four layers of clothing and the threat of his eyelashes freezing solid. He can’t imagine living like that that day in, day out.

Sungchan gives him a bright smile. “Anyway. Are you all ready for your Drifting?”

“Ready as can be,” Chenle says.

“Good, good. We have Jeno already hooked up, so just come over here and we will get your spinal clamp attached.”

Chenle nods. He feels a strange combination of completely numb and burning with excitement; like each part of his body has a will of its own.

Brain numb. Heart thudding in his chest. He glances over at Jeno as one of the assistants attaches his spinal clamp, then breathes out.

“Is good?” Sungchan asks.

“Good,” Chenle repeats. He swallows. It feels surreal. It all feels surreal. They’re not even connected, and he already itches for the Drift. He itches to be back there, submerged in the quiet.

“Now remember. You want to be clear and in sync. Do not fight it,” Sungchan says. “Otherwise we’ll have to pop you out, and that’s just not fun.”

“I know,” Jeno says.

It’s the first thing Chenle’s heard him say since he entered the room.

“How are you feeling?” Chenle asks him. Customary. He might have been a rock star Ranger once, but he still has manners. And it’s probably best to check on the mood of the person whose head you’re about to dive into, anyway.

Jeno’s eyebrows raise slightly. “Fine.”

“You ever done this?”

“Not beyond the Academy.”

The Academy Drift tests were mostly to get you used to the equipment. “Different beast, then. Stay calm. Don’t chase the RABIT.”

“I’m not that stupid,” Jeno says.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Hello!” Sungchan says, snapping both their attention back to him. “Yes, hello. This is Lee-Zhong test Drift one. I am Jung Sungchan. We are now commencing the countdown procedure. Are you ready?”

Chenle nods. Jeno must do the same, because Sungchan beams at them. “Okay. Initiating!”

He types something in, and the relay gel floods through Chenle’s helmet.

The first time it had happened he’d nearly choked; the taste was strange and bitter and he hadn't expected the way it had just _come_ _at him_. But it was like everything else about the Drift. Relax. Take it as it comes. The lights blink inside the visor of his helmet and Chenle shuts his eyes.

“Initiating Neural Bridge.”

Chenle takes a long breath, feeling his Drivesuit swell with the rise of his chest.

Two years. He can do this.

“In five, four, three, two—”

Everything goes black.

Jeno’s mind is nothing like Kun’s. Kun’s was neat; open, only the slightest resistance to Chenle walking through it. Most things well packaged, no hard edges.

Going through Jeno’s mind is like being thrown into a pool with a wave machine set on high. It’s like walking through an overgrown forest, except the forest is alive and it's on fire and it's grabbing at him, and all the RABITs are fleeing around his ankles.

Chenle knows he needs to focus, and yet on the other end he can feel Jeno rifling through his memories. Standing on The Bund, watching the cranes as they assembled the Shatterdome. Eating xiaolongbao with his mother, soup scalding. Nearly choking on the relay gel in his Drift simulation. The first time he’d kissed Renjun, pushing him up against the back of the door in his room.

All pointless. Inconsequential.

Chenle blinks.

He's standing on a concrete dock. There's a Ferris wheel dominating the skyline, and someone is talking to him in Korean — a young woman in a white dress.

“Oppa,” she says, laughing. She's beautiful. “Come on.” She tugs at his sleeve, but Chenle doesn’t move. He’s rooted to the spot. He doesn’t know why.

The waves break against the edge of the dock, a particularly violent slap of the water. There’s something shadowy on the horizon. A swarm of crows, a dark cloud. Growing larger and larger. He can't stop staring. Seafoam spills across the dock and the woman tugs at his sleeve again.

"Oppa?"

Chenle is falling.

He’s outside his own door in the Shatterdome, heart lodged in his throat, a hesitant fist raised to knock before Jeno turns away. Someone grabs his ankle. The world folds in on itself, over and over, an origami crane, colour on colour, sharp folds pressing him flat. He’s spinning and the ocean is coming at him so fast, and as he opens his mouth to scream he slams into the mat of the Kwoon room in the Academy, watching from a bird’s eye view as he pins Jeno to the floor, barehanded, purple bruises blooming on his biceps, something thick coursing through his veins. Jeno reaches up towards Chenle’s face and—

“Your heart wasn’t in that,” Jaemin says. They’re in a dorm room on Kodiak Island. Jaemin is naked.

Something probes at his senses, a steady pressure, like he’s an experiment stuck in a glass tube, the ocean pressing down on him from every direction. The sheets rustle.

It’s cold. It’s so cold. He can’t feel the heat of the explosion at all.

Jaemin reaches towards him and fits a palm against his cheek, his eyes impossibly soft, staring at him with something that almost looks like pity. “Were you thinking about him?”

“I wasn’t—”

Everything disappears like someone had slammed the shutter down, pulled the plug, all the colours sucked down the drain. For a moment there’s blackness, a warmth like he’s returned to the womb, and then he’s pulled into the light near screaming.

Jaemin spitting relay gel into the sink. Jaemin touching the end of his staff to Jaehyun’s stomach. Jade Hurricane torn in two, the camera zooming in on the tiny figure clinging to a hunk of metal floating in the churning sea. Chenle on the floor, below him, his knees on either side of his head, face bright red with exertion. Chenle in the Kwoon room, Chenle dangling the stolen keycard in his face. His hands on Chenle’s arms. A grainy news report of Chenle stepping into Jade Hurricane for the first time, pride swelling within him like an angel’s wings unfurling. Chenle’s mouth. His gasps. Jaemin — no, that memory of Jaemin, again. His dorm room on Kodiak Island, the two of them in Jaemin’s bed. Jaemin is below him and Jeno rolls his hips and Chenle _feels_ it shoot through his body, Jeno panting with every thrust of Jaemin's cock inside him.

He sees Jaemin and Jaehyun step out of the Conn-Pod to a sea of camera flashes, Jaehyun’s smile sheepish, Jaemin’s worth a million dollars. Something bitter twists in his chest and he turns away — and for the first time Chenle is aware of Jeno’s presence in the Drift. He’s calling out and Chenle reaches his hand up for help before everything shifts, misaligned.

A flurry of blinking lights like the arcade on Kodiak Island, when he’d skip class with Jaemin and feed endless quarters into the DDR machine, pumping bass, everything thud-thud at the edge of his senses as Jade Hurricane stomped through the empty streets.

Chenle keeps seeing his own face. Flickering. Something trapped in his stomach, something dripping down the walls. Something in the ash of this burning forest, stuck on his tongue. His first takedown. Him and Kun emerging from the bay doors. That fucking interview they’d made them do on the dock outside the Shatterdome after, when the monsoon storm was looming and the sky was crushed charcoal grey.

He’s distantly aware of someone shouting, of how far the Drift has come out of alignment, and then he’s in the gym again. Then Jeno is standing in front of him and Chenle sees how he looked to Jeno — eyes shut, lashes fanned out, chest heaving, sweat pooling in the dips of his collarbones. Something explodes within him and he looks down and Jeno’s hand is wrapped around him and he’s hissing, he’s moaning, and he wants this so fucking much it’s like he can’t breathe and —

He’s ripped from the Drift like a weed uprooted from a garden, roots and all, pulled clean out, gasping as his throat is cleared, the slightly bitter taste of the relay gel still stuck on the back of his tongue. His limbs feel like jelly and he yanks his helmet off, dropping it to the ground and disconnecting himself from the system by wrapping his fists around the wires and tearing them out.

Severing his nerves and all his blood vessels, removing every trace of Jeno from his mind.

The entire world tilts, metal cool under his palm, a dull pressure in his skull like he’s being slowly pushed apart from the inside out.

Chenle breathes. Long, deep. When he looks up Jeno isn’t moving, save for the rise and fall of his chest. Sungchan is sitting in front of the monitors, staring at Chenle with wide eyes, but no-one moves to do anything.

Marshal Kim is the first one to speak, though his insight isn’t helpful.

“What the fuck was that?”

The weight of every mistake Chenle has ever made bore down on him throughout the first debriefing; between that and the guilt choking him off, he could barely meet Jeno’s eyes. The second one is just Chenle and Sungchan. The privacy of a separate room, a collection of graphs and readouts pulled up on the fish tank glow of the screen — J-Tech jargon that isn’t from his corner of the field. Chenle knows how a Jaeger works, but the Drift is something else.

Then again, he also doesn’t need to know Drift technology to understand that the jagged troughs and peaks on the graphs are colossally bad.

“We think it was a modesty response. Did you access any sexual memories?” Sungchan asks him.

Chenle nods. “Several.”

There’s a pause. Sungchan spins in his chair, the force a little too much so that he has to catch the edge of the desk to stop himself from flying too far. He brings up his tablet and taps on it.

“Here and here, we can see that Jeno tried to — well. He tried to shut the door on you.” He points to two peaks where two lines fall furthest from each other. “A pretty common response. Most people aren’t particularly keen on other people accessing memories of them having sex.”

Chenle swallows. “The memories I saw were of me and Jeno.”

Sungchan pauses. “You did not disclose that you had a relationship with him.”

“I don’t,” Chenle says. “It was a one time thing.”

Sungchan stares at him, and Chenle doesn’t know how to dissect the way his stomach churns. It _was_ a one time thing. He and Jeno had no sexual relationship beyond a frantic handjob in the gym. Nothing beyond blowing off steam.

“I saw further memories of him having sex, but he didn’t try remove me from them,” he adds, wanting the conversation to move on.

“You only felt resistance from the ones that involved you?” Sungchan asks. He leans back in his chair and it groans beneath his weight; probably a sign more than anything that he spends too many hours a day sitting in it.

“Yes.”

“Shit,” Sungchan says. He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not a therapist. Shit.” He picks up the tablet again and taps a few things. “Well. That is interesting. What I can say is that beyond the modesty response, you two went well. You aligned quite a few times. Here—” he taps a section where the two lines run together like the slide of a snake amongst rippling waves of disconnect “—and here. Also here—” a point where one line peaks sharply, then falls back “—you were mostly in sync. There were a lot of good moments. The handshake almost completed, which of course is a good sign. You definitely have potential, and I think Marshal Kim will really want you two together. Jeno is — well. There has been a lot of excitement to hear that he finally tested compatible with someone. They have been waiting for years for Jeno to be able to Drift.”

There isn’t much else that Sungchan has to say that’s of any use to Chenle, and he keeps his silence. He doesn’t comment on anything else. He just lets the rest of Sungchan’s speech wash over him, answering the remainder of his questions in monosyllabic sentences and hoping he doesn’t give away too much, and when he’s released he walks straight back to his room and lies down on his bed.

Sleep comes easy. He doesn’t dream.

He has a mandatory psych eval the next day, where he’s pressured again to disclose any relationship with Lee Jeno that might compromise their compatibility. Chenle repeats again that he has no relationship with Jeno, barring their tenuous friendship in the Academy. The base psychiatrist asks if he’s ever had a sexual relationship with Jeno. Chenle tells her, rather crudely, that Jeno had jerked him off.

She asks him if he has any other conditions that might compromise his ability to be a Ranger.

Chenle looks her in the eye and calmly says: “No.”

He passes his evaluation. She repeats the same thing Sungchan had — that they think that he and Jeno are a very good match. It's clear that he has no say in that opinion, but it doesn't stop him from complaining. She levels him with a cold gaze, unbecoming of the kindness she’s treated him with for their past sessions, and tells him that unless he has a good reason beyond ‘not liking’ Jeno that she will recommend their training continues.

Chenle shuts his mouth. He doesn’t tell her what he left below the ocean. He doesn’t tell her what he left in Jeno’s hands, what he’d seen inside his head.

A bloody heart, pulsing and raw. A mind so thick with fear it had been like swallowing tar. Jeno being left behind, time and time again. The storm on the horizon that never broke.

Jeno had let him see it. He had let him in.

So why was it that when it came to memories of Chenle, Jeno had protected himself, then?

Chenle’s schedule for the next month is beyond brutal. An echo of his later days in the Academy: training heaped on training heaped on training. He wakes at six and goes straight to the mess hall, eating with Jeno, the two of them not exchanging a word. He goes to the Kwoon Room and beats the shit out of Jeno for four hours. He goes to the gym and runs for an hour, then does an additional hour of weight training. After that he’s back in the Kwoon Room, and instead of using the staves they’re fighting hand to hand, flesh to flesh, the impact of Jeno’s open palm on his chest resonating through him.

He strikes hard; not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough that Chenle feels it in his bones. Hard enough that he wants to fight back. Flip him over. Fingers to his neck, feeling his pulse beneath his skin. Feeling the bob of his throat. Dark eyes, skin pale and smooth. Corded muscle that bulges as they both climb to their feet. Jeno sweeps his legs out from under him and Chenle drops, anticipating the follow-up strike, blocking it with his forearm and grabbing Jeno’s ankle, tugging him down and pinning him to the ground.

“Three,” Chenle says. Jeno smiles — just for a split second — before he throws Chenle off him, flipping their positions instantly, warm, heavy, bodyweight pressing him down into the mat.

“Three,” Jeno echoes.

Chenle hits the water, sinking deep, eyes closed. Everything is still and silent, his limbs wrapped in a cocoon of warmth, and he holds still for a second, drifting until his feet hit the bottom of the pool and he pushes off, breaking the surface and, taking in a lungful of chlorine soaked air, the whirr of the filtration filling his ears.

Strike out. Breathe.

An hour of swimming. In the lane beside him Jeno is doing the same. The Shatterdome doesn’t have a pool and they’re swimming off base in a nearby gym, the pull of the PPDC strong enough that they get the indoor pool all to themselves.

Probably good. Marshal Kim wants them to spend as much time together as possible — get over their differences, or something similar. Forced acclimatisation by proximity. Shove them both in the same space and they'll learn to work together.

He finishes his laps before Jeno and doesn't linger, just climbs out of the pool and pushes his hair back, grabs his bag from where he’d left it beside the door and heads to the showers. Inside the changing room he dumps his bag on the benches, grabs his towel to hang over the door and turns on the shower, the water hot and steaming when he steps under the stream.

Chenle is in top physical condition but it doesn’t change the fact that his body _aches_. Training all day is a necessity — piloting is highly physical — but it’s not _that_. It’s fighting with Jeno that gets him, and he’s not even done with that for the day.

After this it's dinner, including an hour of free time, and then he's in the Kwoon room _again,_ free practice for two hours.

By the end of this month he might want to murder Jeno. Either that or they’ll have beat them into perfect alignment, which he supposes is the point. Drift compatibility is the first step. Everything after that is muscle memory; pure training, hundreds of hours of each other’s presence. Something bone deep, worked into every part of them, an invisible tattoo inked over day by day.

The changing room door clatters. Chenle frowns.

"You don't have to keep running away from me, you know," Jeno says. His voice echoes in the empty space, and even without the slap of his bare feet on the tiles Chenle can tell that he's moving, walking towards where Chenle is, maybe. "The silent treatment isn't going to help, so you might as well—"

"Why did you lock me out when we Drifted?"

Chenle cuts him off, the question at the tip of his tongue for far too long. There's a pause, only the burst of the water on the tiles, then Jeno sighs.

"Those were private memories."

"You can't hide anything in the Drift. You should know that."

"I _do_ know that."

"Then what?"

"Why did you chase the RABIT?"

"Why is your mind such a fucking mess?"

Jeno's footsteps stop right outside the stall door. Chenle turns the water off and takes a breath. He grabs his towel from where it’s hanging on the back of the door and wraps it around his waist, pushing the door open and stepping out. Jeno is still wearing his swimming gear: a speedo that truly leaves nothing to the imagination. His legs are smooth, dotted with sparse hair, and it takes a monumental effort for Chenle to tear his eyes from his dick and bring them back up to his face.

He's blushing. Lee Jeno is blushing.

"You had sex with Jaemin," Chenle says. He doesn't know why he's bringing it up, only that he was surprised at how prominent the memory was. Bright and burning, held at the forefront of his mind.

And then Jeno had pulled the shutters down on it.

"You had sex with Renjun," Jeno fires back.

Chenle isn't ashamed of it. "Yeah? What's your point?"

He and Renjun had been on and off until Renjun was transferred to Sydney. Never official, but falling into each other's beds more often than not. Something more than blowing off steam and less than a whispered 'I love you', the strange space so many relationships in the Shatterdome seemed to occupy. It was either that or a wedding in the break room, nothing else left at the end of the world.

"I thought we were just stating facts."

"Why did you shut me out?" he tries again.

Jeno's mind had been a shock, like being submerged in ice water. So many feelings he couldn't process, choked up in his throat, thick like blood, flowing unstemmed from a cut artery. Like Chenle had swung the sword and unleashed a flood.

Jeno _felt_. He felt so much it was almost terrifying.

"I can't..." Jeno starts, but he doesn't finish. "I just can’t, Chenle."

Chenle takes a step forward. The water drips on the tiles, trickles like it’s falling from the shoulders of a Jaeger. Like oil from a broken engine, iridescent, slipping through his hands and staining his skin.

He slides his hand up the back of Jeno's neck — skin hot beneath his palm, droplets of water lingering against the downy hair on his nape, Jeno’s pupils dilating ever so slightly when they make eye contact — and Jeno shudders, his breath hitching.

"Are you afraid?" Chenle asks.

Jeno pulls away, warm skin slipping from beneath Chenle's palm. He goes to push open the shower door and Chenle reaches out, catching his arm. There's a pause where neither of them say anything, a moment of perfect stillness that collapses as Jeno shrugs him off.

"I've been inside your head," Chenle tries, watching as he walks into the stall beside him, hand resting on the flat of the door. "You don't need to hide."

"If you knew, you wouldn’t need to ask,” Jeno says. He doesn’t look back at him. “One day you’ll understand why.”

Marshal Kim finds Chenle before dinner, pulling him out of the dinner line.

“My food?” Chenle says, weak.

“I’ll get you some food. Meituan is finally delivering here.”

Chenle’s mouth waters at the thought of it. Not that the food on base isn’t good — it _is_ good, though maybe it’s just the latent homesickness talking — but the idea of having restaurant food delivered to his door was even better. Last time he’d been in Shanghai none of the food delivery services would come to the Shatterdome — something about PPDC sanctions — and he doesn’t doubt someone’s done something under the table to reverse that rule.

Or maybe Marshal Kim is trying to curry his favour, because the next thing he says is comparable to a bomb being dropped on his head.

“You and Jeno will be rooming together. You’ve been upgraded to Ranger quarters.”

“You really are trying to torture me, aren’t you?” Chenle says. He can’t believe it. He’s pretty sure that by the end of this month he’s going to want to _kill_ Jeno, if he didn’t already from all the times he’d slammed him into the Kwoon room floor.

“You know damn well that if you become a Ranger again you’ll be sharing a room. Consider it an early upgrade.”

“I don’t _want_ to share with him. I don’t even want to be a Ranger.”

“You act an awful lot like a Ranger for someone who doesn’t want to be one.”

“It’s not like you’re giving me a choice. All of you. I feel like I’m being railroaded.”

“I seem to remember you saying you’d ‘do whatever you wanted’ when it came to the deployment of Jade Hurricane during the Tianjin incident. I _could_ go and assume _that_ Zhong Chenle has been mellowed out by the southern sunshine, but I think you know as well as I do that you’re making minimal effort to actually resist this. You can stomp your feet and pretend all you want, but in the end you’re the one who stepped onto the mat in the Kwoon room and fought with Lee Jeno. You’re the one who even turned up.”

Chenle curls his hand into a fist. They’re standing in the corridors outside the sleeping quarters, rust spotting the walls, only the hum of the ventilation system and the steady echo of the conversation carried down the empty halls serving as background noise to their conversation

“At least allow me privacy,” Chenle says. “Please.”

“If you want this to work, you’re going to have to open up to him,” Marshal Kim says. He regards Chenle for a second, then his expression softens, a gentleness glimmering behind his eyes. “You know you can’t hide anything in the Drift.”

“I know.” Something blocks Chenle’s throat and he looks away, blinking rapidly.

“I’ll let you move your things first.” He rests a hand on Chenle’s back. “I hope you know I believe in you, Chenle. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

It becomes routine. Every morning they wake up together. They argue over who’s using the shower first. Chenle makes sure he takes the maximum amount of time, until Jeno is banging on the door and telling him to get out. He shaves his face and brushes his teeth while Jeno is washing himself, and if he’s feeling particularly petty he’ll flush the toilet just to turn the water scalding. Jeno will emerge, dripping wet, dry off his stupid ripped physique and then throw his wet towel at Chenle as a reprimand.

And then the day will repeat. Same as always. Exercise, fighting each other. Swimming together. Chenle setting a new personal best with the bench press because fuck if he’ll let Jeno beat him in anything. Eating their meals, where they both steal food from each other and neither of them mentions it. It’s like a game almost; how much of a meal can they eat from each other’s plates? Chenle steals all of Jeno’s baos and in response, Jeno will make zero effort in hiding his attempts to steal Chenle’s noodle soup. One night they’d been served mao xie and Jeno had reached over the table and taken an entire crab off Chenle’s plate, smiling when he’d caught his eye.

After that Chenle had vowed to never let Jeno near his food, but he’d relented fairly quickly. There was a certain charm about watching Jeno eat, a fondness Chenle would never admit to out loud. Something harkening back to their academy days, when Jeno still wore glasses and his lenses would fog up as he ate the soup served in the cafeteria.

Today is a break from the usual.

Jeno doesn’t steal his food. He eats in silence, clearing his plate of egg fried rice and downing his paper cup of tea quickly, drumming his fingers on the table.

Today Kun collects them after lunch, before they’re due to head to the Kwoon room. Chenle has made a habit of changing straight from his gym clothes into the sweat shorts and tank top he wears for sparring, and he’s still dressed that way when Kun leads them back down the corridors.

“Some advance warning would have been nice,” Chenle says, tugging his jacket around his frame a little more. It’s more or less a thin windbreaker, one he’d gotten at a street market for 80 yuan, good for keeping the cold air at bay and nothing else. Useless in the corridors, which seemed to double as some kind of makeshift refrigerator.

“Sorry,” Kun says. “Technically this is off business. I had to bribe the Marshal to even let me adjust your schedule, and I wasn’t sure he’d let me — but I think you’ll want to see this.”

The hangar is _loud_. It’d been loud when they’d arrived, but now it’s positively a racket. Half the Shatterdome seems to be present, either working on the Jaegers or on the ground; playing basketball, trading food and speaking in a melting pot of languages that would make the UN proud, probably, if PPDC weren’t sapping half their budget. There’s sparks flying everywhere, great shadows that pass overhead as parts of Jaegers are transferred to their owners, and in front of them Sunlight Cinder is being wheeled forward, skeletal beginnings of a new arm already attached to her side, gold paint gleaming like a treasure trove, the phoenix carved into her side scratched and dented.

They’re not here for her, though.

Kun leads them away, down into a bay he’s pretty sure hasn’t been in years — one with a brand new occupant.

Chenle looks up. Up and up, craning his neck until he wonders if he should lie on the floor, because standing at the base of the Jaeger he feels absolutely dizzy, microscopic. An ant in the presence of a titan.

“Seventy-eight meters,” Kun says, “fourteen hundred tonnes. They’re calling her Abyss Walker. She arrived this morning.”

“Is she…?” Chenle asks. He glances at Jeno, whose eyes are glassy.

“Yours? She will be.”

Chenle walks forward, enchanted. Abyss Walker is sleek — armour midnight black, her core glittering, more like a dancer than a weapon. Towering over them, a silent guardian. He lays a hand against her foot, and the metal is cool.

It isn’t _his_ Jaeger. There is no familiarity about her; no embedded memories from years of combat. She’s new, fresh, unmoulded. Her chest is hard plate, no rocket bays. No sword slipped up her sleeve. The Conn-Pod isn’t attached, but he knows nothing would ever look like Jade Hurricane, anyway — her distinct guardian lion face, a twin to a Jaeger that had been long lost to the sea. Teeth and fangs, a Chinese Jaeger through and through.

He looks back at Jeno, who’s staring up, mouth open. Neck craned, just as Chenle had done.

He gets it. Being told that this was yours. This was the monster that would become your second skin — how you’d save the world. Two halves of a whole, three halves of a whole, left, right, and the Jaeger. Small gestures that translate into something that can split the Earth, everything amplified.

Chenle places his other hand on Abyss Walker’s foot, palm open, and shuts his eyes. The hangar is loud, voices echoing off the high ceilings, clatter of machinery and forklifts and metal on metal, twisting, sparking. He takes a breath, and tunes it out, and under it all he can hear the sea.

Not the oppressive silence — three meters under, sinking through blackness — but the gentle crash of waves. The thunder of his steps, the steady everything-and-nothing of the Drift.

He opens his eyes. His reflection stares back at him, and behind his shoulder there is Jeno.

The simulation is in the same room as last time. Only Sungchan is there. Jeno arrives late, and he smiles at Chenle when he comes through the door. He’s dressed in his casual clothes, but it’s the least of Chenle’s concern — his heart is pounding like he’d run a marathon.

“Are you sure this is okay?” he asks.

“Of course!” Sungchan says, the brightness of his demeanor at contrast with the Siberian darkness lurking in his accent. “Is one hundred percent okay! You’ve Drifted before, you’ll be good! Now, Jeno, come here.”

He helps Jeno climb into the rig, humming to himself. Chenle’s heart is lodged in his throat and every time he closes his eyes he feels like he’s about to fall into oblivion. A constant loop of falling backwards, broken every time he blinks. On the inside of his helmet he sees his reflection, eyes wide and warped.

“Hold your breath,” Sungchan says.

“What?”

Chenle hits the water.

Slamming through, corkscrewing downwards. It wraps around his limbs in a bone crushing embrace, and when he opens his mouth no sound comes out — no air in his lungs, every part of him wrung dry and empty. Everything is black and he tries to scream, but if he does he can’t hear. The tide pummels his body and it’s like he’s forgotten to swim, too. Like someone else is controlling his body.

He’s falling. Falling into nothingness, the stars swallowed by a black maw, every part of him consumed. The rush of the ocean, the beat of the waves, all of it gone as he tumbles under, and when he opens his mouth again it's like all the screams he’d tried to release before happen at once.

Reverberating inside his skull, vibrating at a frequency that feels like it could shatter glass, a feedback loop that resonates as his body is pulled apart by a thousand grasping hands. The sea floods in and water presses at him from every side, trapping him, drowning him.

And then, like a slice of brightness through the silt, there’s a voice.

“Chenle! Hey, Chenle. It’s okay! Chenle, it’s okay.”

Chenle gulps, swallowing as much as he can, gasping. He's still screaming. It’s dark. It’s so dark, and the ocean is so cold.

“Chenle!” A hand on his wrist. A flash of warmth, like a match in a cave. The lightning strikes overhead, the storm bruising the dark night sky. Across the harbour Kun clings to a metal panel the colour of jade. His hair is wet, his helmet smashed. He opens his mouth. “Hey. Chenle.”

The metal is soft beneath his fingers.

“Am I dead?”

“You’re alive.”

“It’s so cold, Kun," he says. He’s chilled to the bone, frozen deep like a frog in the winter. Heart stopped, blood immobile. "The water’s so cold.”

“It’s not Kun. It’s me, Jeno.”

“Jeno?”

“Yeah. Jeno. We were in the Academy together. You’re going to be a Ranger. You’re not in the water, Chenle. You’re in bed.”

It all slams into him in a wave. Chenle takes a ragged breath and his cheeks are wet; it all tastes salty. Everything seeping back in like colour returning to the world.

“Chenle?”

He snatches his hand away, reaching up to wipe the tears from his eyes. “Shit,” he says. His heart thuds so loud it feels like it’s about to burst and his entire body hurts. He’s in his bed. He’s not in the sea — he’s in his bed and he had another nightmare and he shares his room with Jeno now, so of course he heard him. Of course he heard him break and shatter. “Shit, I’m sorry Jeno. It was a bad dream. I’m sorry.”

What must he think? No-one should ever want to get up in a Jaeger with him.

“It’s okay. There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m here. You’re safe.”

He doesn’t know why, but there’s something so simple about it. Something like the first days when he’d slept in Jisung’s bed. Something crushing lifted off his chest that causes him to sob, a fresh wave of tears coming forth.

“Is there anything I can do?” Jeno asks, voice gentle. “Do you need anything? Here, I’ll get some water.”

“No,” Chenle says, reaching out and grabbing at the first part of Jeno he can find — his forearm, he realises. The room is dark and Chenle’s eyes sting. “Please stay.”

“Okay,” Jeno says. There’s a pause, and then the mattress dips. His fingertips brush against Chenle’s arm. “It’s okay, I’m here. You just had a bad dream, right?”

“Just a bad dream,” Chenle repeats. He’s scared. What if he hurts Jeno? He needs the weight of his body against him — needs to feel grounded — but he’s scared that if he does he’ll hurt him the way he hurt Jisung. Tear him to pieces, blood under the crescent of his nails. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. It happens sometimes.”

“It’s okay. Nothing to worry about. You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. Is there anything I can do for you?”

And it’s like a part of Chenle cracks. Some small part of his mind, tunneling through, a hole in the brick and mortar. No sea water, just cool clean air. Just Jeno’s warmth.

“Can you just…” he says, trailing off. His words are still wet, tears drying on his cheeks. “Can you…?”

Jeno gets it. Somehow. He climbs into Chenle’s bed and lies down beside him, face to face, opening his arms and pulling Chenle against him, cradling him like a child. “Like this?” he asks.

Chenle nods, shuddering. He can still taste the sea in his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Jeno murmurs, running his hand through his hair, hesitant. “You’re safe. I’ll be here for as long as you need me. It was just a dream.”

“It’s just a dream,” Chenle echoes. His heart pounds, and he takes a ragged breath, resting his forehead against Jeno’s chest. “It’s just a dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Chenle sniffs. Maybe he should. He doesn't know how to untangle it, though. It's like he's trapped, treading water. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out. A closed circuit, pumping stagnant water through his veins.

“It’s nothing important,” he says. “It just happens sometimes. Just — just stress.”

“Okay,” Jeno says. He rubs soothing circles against Chenle’s back, palm warm through the thin cotton of his shirt. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

Chenle breathes, long and steady. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s okay, Jeno is here. He fists his hands in his shirt and shuts his eyes, focusing on the steady rush of the air in his lungs and the play of Jeno’s fingers in his hair. Soothing against his scalp, Jeno’s body heat radiating out, until everything slows down and the quiet crawls back to Chenle, piece by piece. Cradled in the crook of Jeno’s arms, lulled to sleep by his heartbeat.

The second simulation goes better than the first, which is to say that it isn’t a complete disaster. They align at the start, and then as Chenle tries to sink in they fall out, Jeno slamming doors, Chenle bristling as Jeno pokes deeper and deeper into his memories.

“That was your fault,” Jeno says, that night, lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling.

Chenle lifts his towel to wipe his face and considers it. Jeno had pushed _hard_ that time, tunneling straight into his mind and washing over him. He’d felt the sea water rush into this throat and he’d panicked, pushing hard against Jeno and throwing them so far out of alignment Sungchan had had to pull the plug right then and there.

“Don’t be so invasive,” Chenle says. He’s little incensed — half at Jeno, half at himself for how much he’d bristled at Jeno seeing his memory of Ashmouth. Especially after last night; it still felt raw. “It should be easy, not you digging through my memories like a fucking filing cabinet.”

“I’m not trying to dig,” Jeno says.

Chenle snorts. “Well you’re doing a bad job of it.”

“What, the way you did?”

“I didn’t do anything. You’re the one who shut me out.”

“Your mind is like a fucking mansion!” Jeno says. Chenle turns around from where he’d been aimlessly reorganising the papers he’d left on the desk to see Jeno is still staring at the ceiling, face neutral.

“Opulent and more than you could ever afford?”

“More like decrepit and run down with way too many rooms. I get lost. It’s like everything is fine and then I feel—” he raises a hand then drops it on his chest again. “It’s like I can feel so much seeping in. I felt like I was drowning.”

Chenle freezes for a second, nails digging into his palms. He takes a deep breath.

“It’s Kun, isn’t it?” Jeno asks, before Chenle can even divert the topic.

It’s like a wave slamming into his chest. It knocks the breath from his lungs, splashing all over him.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeno says. He’s looking at Chenle now, so soft and open that it pains him. Something so wrought with forgiveness, with understanding. “I saw some of your memories of him. You really look up to him, don’t you?”

Chenle nods. “I—Yeah. I do.”

Something pangs in his stomach, and he drops his towel on the back of a chair and crosses the room, toeing off his slippers at the bottom of the bed and sitting on the edge of Jeno’s mattress. His back is to Jeno, and he flinches slightly at the groan of the springs as Jeno sits up, his hand on his shoulder tentative.

Chenle takes a deep breath, inhaling the stillness of the air, exhaling all his doubts.

What is there to say? That sometimes he’s drowning. Sometimes he’s terrified. Sometimes he lets the water consume him and never comes back, a siren song undeniable. _What if’s_ laid on top of each other, like he’s scribbling each story on the same piece of paper, until it’s thick with black ink, until it’s dripping, torn to pieces beneath the nib of his pen.

Chenle was the lucky one, and sometimes he wishes he wasn’t. Sometimes he wonders why it happened the way it did.

(Sometimes he dreams he comes back to shore and Kun never follows him.)

Chenle pulls his legs up onto the bed and lies down, and Jeno takes the hint, following him.

“Can I touch you?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Chenle says. He’s facing the wall, staring at the few photos Jeno had pinned up. They’re mostly of him and Jaemin, but there’s one he knows must be of his family — his mother and sister have the same eye smile as him — and one of their graduating class at the academy.

In it Chenle is standing between Renjun and Kun, his arms thrown around their shoulders. Jeno is beside Jaemin, and he’s beaming. There’s snow on the ground and they’re all wearing scarves and knitted gloves; he remembers running inside screaming afterwards because it felt like his nose was about to fall off.

It feels like a lifetime ago. He supposes it was. They’re all different people know, only this one point that binds them together.

Here and now, in Jeno’s bed, Jeno presses his face into the back of Chenle’s neck and inhales. Chenle shuts his eyes and tries to relax, but he can’t: every part of him is wound tight, like he’s a wire about to snap.

As if by some kind of sixth sense Jeno presses his thumb against Chenle’s shoulder, working it into the knotted mass of his muscle. Chenle hisses.

“It’s okay,” Jeno murmurs. He removes his hand and breathes deep again. “Do you want me to help? No pressure, but I’ve been told I’m pretty good with my hands.”

Chenle ignores the candle wick flame of heat in his gut. “It’s fine.”

“You sure?” Jeno says. He reaches up again and works at the knot and Chenle grits his teeth, relief flooding through him, gone as the heat of Jeno’s touch fades again. “You’re super tense, Chenle.”

Chenle unclenches his fists. “Okay,” he says, and it’s small. It’s so small. He feels tiny in the wake of everything, in the prospect of Jeno knowing exactly what had happened that day. The sharp fragments of his nightmares, broken into pieces like reflections from a shattered mirror, blood smeared across their jagged edges. Bright red, nothing lucky about it.

Jeno’s warmth leaves him, and he wants to protest, but he manages to bite down the plea before it escapes his treacherous mouth.

Damn all this. It’s like the Drift has left him fragile, scooped all of his insides clean out. He can’t want this badly. He can’t protest at Jeno simply sitting up. He’d vowed not to want like this again, and yet he can feel it happening. Slow motion disaster. Time is a flat circle.

“Here,” Jeno says, and his hands on him are so gentle that Chenle wants to scream. “Roll over.”

It’s nice. That’s the only way Chenle can describe it. Nice. He’s still shirtless from the shower and the warmth of Jeno’s touch is soothing, flowing over his bones as he works at the knots in Chenle’s shoulders. He’s straddling his waist, working at him with the heel of his palm, and it takes all of Chenle’s self control not to moan at the pleasure that fills him up.

“Fuck,” he says, as Jeno rubs at a particularly stubborn knot at the edge of his shoulderblade. “Jesus Christ, your hands _are_ magic.”

"I told you I'm good. Though you should go get a real massage next time you go into the city. You really are like a rock. All through here—" he digs into the meat of Chenle's neck "—it feels so tense I'm surprised you're not in pain."

Chenle makes a muffled noise. He does his stretches; it surprises him that Jeno manages to get this reaction from him. Surprises him even more that maybe Jeno is right.

He won't admit it though.

Jeno shifts, the weight of his body pressing into his waist, and an image rises in his mind. Chenle is powerless to stop it — it's buoyant. Fizzing up like champagne bubbles and spreading through him, and he knows he'll have to deal with the consequences later — he can't hide anything in the Drift — but he doesn't care. He just indulges, settling into it.

God, it’s good to have Jeno this close. Tiny sparks of pleasure race through him, and Chenle scrunches his eyes shut, gasping at the dig of the heel of Jeno's palm into his skin.

"Good?" Jeno asks, chuckling.

"You're insane," Chenle says. "I feel like angels are dancing on my back."

"You're really far too flattering. I just took some classes in my spare time in Tokyo. Figured it'd be useful for something."

"Oh, it's useful." He grunts. "So fucking useful."

"Calm down," Jeno says, but he's laughing.

God, he's so _warm_.

The thought flashes through Chenle's mind like a lightning strike, illuminating the room, and he has to bite his lip to not give any verbal clue. Of Jeno slipping his fingers lower — working at the small of his back. Digging into the knots at the base of his spine, and going lower. Pushing under his waistband, kneading into the meat of his ass. He imagines Jeno leaning down and kissing the small of his back, the wet drag of his tongue. Dipping lower, his hands spreading him open until —

"Wait," Chenle says, just as Jeno digs his fingertips into a particularly tough knot near his shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"I think I'm... good for now," Chenle says, hesitant. He can feel his cock in his shorts, straining against his boxers and uncomfortably hard. "If that's okay for you?"

"Oh? Yeah, sure," Jeno says. He rests his hand on Chenle's back for a second, weight still heavy on top of him, before he climbs off. "Yeah, of course. Sorry."

"No," Chenle says. His voice is a little higher than usual. He wonders if Jeno notices. "No, no. It's not your fault. It's just a bit too much."

Jeno laughs. "Ah, sorry. I went kind of hard. You were really worked up. I should probably stop before I tenderise your muscles."

"Yeah," Chenle says, his laugh weak. Holy shit, he is _so_ fucking hard. How the hell is he supposed to get up like this? He's lying in Jeno's bed, for fuck’s sakes. It's not like he can take a nap. "I think I'm just going to claim your mattress."

Jeno shoves at him, playful. "You're gonna take everything I own at this point," he says.

His smile is fond. The lights in their room are shitty as ever and his face is cast in a sickly yellow glow, sharp lines of his jaw muted and murky, but it's here that Chenle can acknowledge it. It's here that he looks at Jeno and feels something drop in his stomach, a single raindrop falling into a still pond, ripples echoing out through his being.

Jeno looks handsome. He doesn't just look handsome — he looks something more. Something Chenle can’t describe. Something warm that radiates out, a feeling so tender it feels like it should damage him, two extremes that lean towards each other, the head and the tail, a loop that goes on forever and forever.

"I'm gonna take a shower," Jeno says. It's soft, and he doesn't move from where he's standing beside the bed for a moment after saying it. "If you're here when I get back, I _will_ throw you into your bed."

Chenle isn't sure why, but after that day something shifts. It's no great change, but it's like they stop chafing, like everything flows a little better. The clatter of their staves, the rhythm of their feet on the mat, matched like a dance. Instead of their night practice, Marshal Kim sends them into the city and they walk along The Bund together, Chenle pointing out all the landmarks.

They pause when they get to the gap in the skyline opposite, ground zero for the destruction Pursuer had wrecked.

"That's where the memorial is," Chenle says, swallowing.

A phone that never stopped ringing. A phone that after a few days went straight to the answering machine. Dust and rubble, the Huangpu River stained Kaiju Blue. When he emerged from the basement his throat was raw and the tears stung in his eyes, and on the skyline the figure of Iron Witch stood tall. The crematoriums would run 24/7 for almost a month.

Chenle had enlisted in the Academy the day he'd turned eighteen, the smell of crushed glass and concrete lingering in his nose, mouth full of ash.

“For the attack?” Jeno asks.

“Yeah.”

(It’s different when you have no-one left. Great wounds torn into them, claws that pick them clean. There are flowers growing on his parents’ grave. They were his mother’s favourite.)

They stop and stare in silence. A ferry floats down the river like a neon swan, and on the buildings opposite the big screens play advertisements for luxury goods, lasers dancing through the indigo sky, everything big and brilliant and bright. The traffic flows around them while they remain still — not speaking, just watching. Companionship in this strange stillness, in all the things they don’t say.

They don’t need to. They’ve been inside each other’s heads.

Chenle holds out his hand, brushing his knuckles against Jeno’s side. Purple light plays across Jeno’s face, and when he meets Chenle’s gaze his expression softens, eyes folding up, smile small.

His palm is warm.

It all flows through his fingers like water in the river. Like the trickle of the stream, flashes of koi scales in the corners of his sight. Like the beat of his feet on the treadmill. Sweat pouring down his back, the clash of their staves together. Jeno, a whirlwind. Chenle, a wildfire. They sneak into the hangar on their day off, bags of takeout food in hand, egg tarts fresh from the kitchen, sticky rice, Jeno making pinching gestures as Chenle picks up the jiaozi laid out carefully in the paper carton the street vendor had handed them. Legs hanging over the edge of the catwalk, fifty meters up, staring into the digital heart of Abyss Walker, empty and dull, only their reflections in the polished metal.

Everything seems to come back to the Academy, and Chenle starts to wonder if he simply isn’t equipped to move forward. If he’s an image frozen in time, forever trapped hitting the water.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Jeno says, and the red glow of the hangar lights shift over him. “It takes two to pilot a Jaeger.”

The hangar is empty at this time of night, all the engineers taking a well-earned rest. Sunlight Cinder and Iron Witch are still under repairs, but in the bay opposite them Valley Dancer is shining, the gold and white of the flames painted up her arms shifting in the gloom. A towering giant, watching over them all.

“I know,” Chenle says. The night before last he’d curled up in bed on the phone with Jisung, listening to the low tone of his voice to send him to sleep; the night before that he’d spoken to Kun — echoed sentiments of the same thing.

 _Your burdens are not yours alone to share_. He thinks he’s beginning to understand it. Piece by piece. Jeno is not Kun. Abyss Walker is not Jade Hurricane.

“Will you let me help you, then?”

Chenle looks up at him, and beside him their mirror images shift, the darkness of Abyss Walker’s chest like a black mirror, the still surface of the midnight sea.

He has to, doesn’t he? That’s what it’s all about. Alignment. Physical and mental, everything moving in time with you. The smallest gesture, amplified in a seventy meter tall giant.

Chenle picks up another jiaozi and dips it in the soy sauce, cupping his hand under it as he reaches over to offer it to Jeno. Jeno doesn’t protest. He just opens his mouth and lets Chenle feed him, and Chenle smiles. No words passed between them, but he thinks Jeno understands anyway.

“What happens if we fail this test?” Jeno asks. He’s sitting in lotus position on the mat. Chenle is kneeling in front of him, massaging his knuckles. Their freehand sparring sessions never follow a strict schedule; they’d arrived at the room thirty minutes ago and haven’t actually touched each other yet, warming up, Jeno practicing solo with one of the staves while Chenle did yoga.

His hips have felt stiff recently — mildly worrying for someone halfway through their twenties — but he figures it might also just be the ridiculous amount of exercise he’s been doing recently. Coming up on their last official Drift Test they’d eased up on the schedule; he and Jeno were still required to be together, but it had been less training and more freedom to leave the Shatterdome. More time to bond outside of combat. More time for those last few walls to break down. The trainers had always told him that there was only so much fighting could do. The last part was about opening yourself up.

It was about taking the keys and handing them over — about letting someone in.

Their first moves are lazy. The sensation of palms on skin, warm and dry, sliding over the smooth expanse of each other's muscles. Reacquainting their bodies, like they don't know each other by heart. Like Chenle couldn't close his eyes and paint a near perfect picture of Jeno at this point. Trace the roll of his shoulders like the waves breaking on the shore. The curve of his smile. The mole beneath his right eye, where Chenle has pressed the pad of his thumb as they'd stood beside each other in the bathroom, jostling for the use of their single tiny sink.

He wonders if Jeno can draw him the same way. Etched onto the back of his eyelids like an afterimage, the flicker of the flames on the water. Something precious. Something only for the two of them.

Jeno bows. Chenle follows. Only for this once is he behind, and when Jeno moves he moves with him. Blocking the kick. Arms up. Jab, swing. Normally it's light contact, doing little more than leaving the occasional bruise, but this time Jeno’s strikes are heavier, and Chenle matches him.

It’s better like this, anyway. No holding back, just their blood, just the burn of their muscles. The heel of Jeno’s palm against Chenle’s chest, pressing into the ache of his bruises. Only the thin barrier of cloth, only an implication separating the lover’s caress from the fighter’s blow.

Jeno’s open palm strikes below the hollow of his neck, and he’s not sure where the line is anymore.

To fight is to dialogue. It’s a speech, it’s a give and take. Jeno sweeps his feet out from under him, Chenle springs back up. He kicks and strikes, leg already pulled back even as Jeno winces at the pain blooming at the side of his ribs.

It’s saying this: I know you. I know where to strike. I know where to lay my hands on you and sink in, like a predator with its teeth to your throat.

Are you afraid?

They circle each other. Their laboured breath echoes off the high ceiling and Jeno strikes again, knocking him down. Chenle spins as he hits the mat, kicking out at Jeno’s ankle, and brings him down with him. His body falls on top of him and Chenle flips them over, grappling with him, locking his legs around his sides even as Jeno struggles.

"C'mon," Chenle says, laughing, perched on him. His hands are tangled with Jeno's, holding them against the mat, and Jeno grins, wolfish, before he throws him off.

Chenle slams into the mat, legs unwrapping, spilling out even as Jeno climbs on top of him, a perfect mirror of his previous position. The light halos out around him, and his fingers interlock perfectly with Chenle's, his breath coming ragged as they stare at each other.

"C'mon," Jeno repeats.

Chenle doesn't try to throw him off. He doesn't move. Jeno's limbs cage him in, and his chest rises and falls, tank top hanging down, skin on display, all his muscles cast in shadow. His dark nipples, and Chenle stares, his whole body on edge. Thin, sharp, knife's edge, razor wire. Jeno's grip is loose and Chenle's slides a hand out, reaching up, shaking.

Eyes on each other. Jeno is still on top of him. Warm, heavy. Comforting in a way, like waking up during a rainy night and burrowing under the blankets. A port during the storm, something Chenle knows he can rely on.

 _When did it get like this?_ he wonders. _When did everything change?_

(He's been inside Jeno's head. There should be nothing to hide.)

The slide of his hand up the back of Jeno's neck, caressing the soft hair on the nape. Something that burns, and Chenle doesn't need to do anything. Jeno is already leaning in. He already knows.

He already knows how much Chenle has thought about this.

The press of Jeno's lips is permission for everything to dissolve. It's permission for Chenle to let go of the volcanic desire that's been building within, a pyroclasm, an eruption, a natural disaster, the whole world falling away with it.

He gives in and lets go, and there is no fury, but it burns all the same. Jeno kisses him, and Chenle hopes he understands. He hopes he knows that at some point or another, Jeno cracked Chenle open and the sea didn’t rise within him.

Chenle rolls them over so he's on top, and Jeno doesn't protest — he doesn’t make a snide comment about Chenle needing to be in control. He just keeps kissing him, biting at his lip, alternating between kisses and licks, until Chenle presses his tongue into his mouth, groaning when the hardness of Jeno's cock drags against his ass.

Chenle hisses, breaking away to kiss across Jeno’s jaw, dragging his teeth against his skin, leaving wet patches that glimmer in the light. One of Jeno's hands drops down his back and Chenle arches, rubbing against him, making sure Jeno knows absolutely what he's dealing with.

"Oh," Jeno says, and he stills, his hand fisted in the fabric of Chenle's top. "Chenle. _Oh_."

Chenle cants his hips downward, rubbing his cock against Jeno’s stomach, allowing him to feel how hard he is. “That’s because of you,” he says.

The mats creak underneath them and Jeno throws his head back, allowing Chenle to kiss across the column of his neck, a low moan rumbling beneath his skin. “Holy fuck, Chenle.”

“You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?” Chenle asks. He doesn’t know how he knows, only that it’s there. Something written in the arc of his moves, the way his hands linger on Chenle’s skin for a fraction too long. Something in the way he’d appeared in Jeno’s mind. How the gym had blurred away and all he could feel when Jeno pumped at his cock was something akin to raw desire — something that came from the inside out.

It was his now. Jeno had given it to him.

“Yes,” Jeno says. “You saw.”

“Is that why you shut me out?”

He pulls back to stare him and Jeno is defiant. Eyes dark, midnight flame. “We can’t do this here,” Jeno says. Deflecting, but the implication is there. Something more than just this.

Chenle slumps against him. He leans down and nuzzles at his face again, planting a kiss on his cheek, then his jaw.

“Hey,” Jeno repeats. “We can’t. I really don’t condone the continued ruining of PPDC facilities.”

“You’re such a buzzkill,” Chenle says. He grinds down against Jeno, who slips a hand under his shirt and presses his fingers into his bare skin, holding Chenle steady as he turns his face back towards him to capture Chenle’s mouth in a kiss.

They stay like that for a while. Hands on bodies, lips on lips. The heat rises in Chenle, and he knows Jeno is right, but Chenle doesn’t want to let him go.

Jeno’s hand lingers on the small of his back when they finally break apart, and Chenle stands up first, climbing off Jeno, feet sinking into the mat. Sweat cool on his skin, his cock painfully hard in his sweatshorts.

He holds out a hand for Jeno. Jeno looks at him, then he reaches out and lets Chenle help him up.

There is a delicate silence when they get back to the room. Something gossamer fine, draped between and over them, glimmering as Jeno shuts the door and turns the lock. Everything else implied and understood. He turns to Chenle and opens his mouth, but Chenle is already closing the distance, stepping into his space and pulling him close to kiss him. Breaking that strand and wrapping them in it. Kissing Jeno over and over, his hands roaming over his body.

Jeno moulds himself Chenle’s touch, the transference of the Drift in action; what Jeno knows of Chenle, Chenle knows of Jeno. These parts of them that are woven together, blood vessels cut off and reattached, things that are shared. Blood that is Jeno's, pooling in his mouth, in his ribs, in the chambers of his heart. Flowing through him.

They fall onto the bed, shirts shed. Warm skin on warm skin, and Chenle feels out the shape of Jeno’s abs with his palm, relishing the ripple of muscle under his touch.

It shouldn’t feel this good. It shouldn’t feel like it’s the first time he’s seeing Jeno. They’ve seen enough of each other shirtless, swam and showered together. Yet here Chenle is allowed to touch. He’s allowed to stare. He has permission, and Jeno is _beautiful_.

He sits up on his haunches and Jeno follows him, not wanting to break the kiss. Chenle maps out his back, and their lips slide together, soft sighs, the rustle of the sheets. As if in turn Jeno reaches between them and curls his nails against Chenle’s abs, and Chenle hisses, the light scratch teasing, the tiniest spark of pain running along his senses.

“I still can’t believe you got so fit,” Jeno says. “When did you start working out? Your abs are better than _mine_.”

“About two months after my first real drop,” Chenle says. “When you get into the Conn-Pod you’ll understand why. That rig is so fucking heavy.”

He doesn’t know when it became a when, not an if, only that Chenle is absolute in his belief that they’ll make it. He needs to be back up there, and fuck if it’ll be with anyone except Jeno.

“God,” Jeno says. Splaying out his fingers, feeling the ridges of his muscles, looking at him in utter awe. “God, you’re so fucking hot Chenle.”

It curls within him, the heel of Jeno’s palm pressing at his waistband — Chenle wants to hear Jeno’s voice cracking in praise _forever_ — everything pulled wire tight. Chenle pushes at Jeno’s shoulder and Jeno understands, falling back against the mattress, allowing Chenle a second to admire him before he dives in. Jeno is gorgeous. Has _been_ gorgeous; whip thin waist, sharp lines and corded muscle, the deep v of his stomach that dips into his waistband, veins standing out on his forearms, all the ridges of his bones, all the parts of him Chenle wants to taste.

He wants to bite. He wants to dig his teeth in and never let go. Tear him open and sink down into him, mark him as his own. This is mine, and no-one else will ever have you like I have.

Chenle dips down, the mattress creaking under his knees, and presses kisses to Jeno’s chest, wrapping his hands around his waist and listening for the quickening of his breath — the soft whimpers as he licks across his abs.

Jeno is delightfully vocal. Every movement draws a different sound from him — pitchy whines, gentle moans, whimpers and gasps, all of it tinged with a desperation that only serves to spur Chenle on. He leans into him, nuzzling at his cock, then kisses him through his pants, mapping out the shape of him with his mouth, leaving a wet impression against the fabric.

When he presses his nose against him again Jeno’s hand shoots up and closes around nothing, centimeters from his hair.

“Please,” Jeno says.

It sparks, something that reaches across between them and takes a hold of Chenle’s heart. Something he knows in that moment he’ll never find words for. He’s still buzzing from them sparring, but there is only tenderness in the way he undresses Jeno. There is only softness in his touch, in the stroke of his hand as he closes it around Jeno’s cock, thumbing at the head, feeling the weight of him.

Chenle doesn’t speak. He just takes in the sight of Jeno — so beautiful it’s like he’s being cut straight through — and then he licks a long stripe along the side of his cock and swallows him down.

Jeno moans. His hands grasp at the sheets and his hips twitch and his head smacks into the mattress, an audible thud as Chenle hollows out his cheeks and sucks at him.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he says, and Chenle takes it as a cue to keep going, bobbing his head and circling the base of his cock with his free hand, looking up until Jeno meets his eyes again; ripping another moan from his throat. “Holy fuck Chenle.”

His hand twists in Chenle’s hair and Chenle keeps going, inhaling his scent, staring at Jeno, tongue pressed flat against his shaft as Chenle works at him. Chenle has thought about this more than once — Jeno’s taste in his mouth, the way he sits on his tongue, the gasps he lets out in the heat of the night, replaying the memory of the two of them in the gym — and the real thing is better than he could have ever imagined.

“Wait,” Jeno says. He moans again, lashes fluttering, fucking up ever so slightly into Chenle’s mouth. He tugs at Chenle’s head. “Oh fuck, wait, I’m close, Chenle—”

The amount of saliva that Chenle leaves dripping across Jeno’s cock as he pulls off is obscene — he wipes it away from his mouth with his hand and grins, his heart fluttering.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” Chenle says, and the way Jeno looks at him is so painfully open it’s like lightning over open water, illuminating him and laying him bare.

“Oh fuck,” Jeno says. He screws his eyes shut then opens them again, like he can’t believe this is real. “You can’t just say that.”

“It’s true,” Chenle says. “You deserve to know.”

He crawls up Jeno’s body, straddling him again and kissing him, silencing his protest. Everything buzzes through him, and Chenle is so sure of this — arrow straight, like a knife worked under his skin — so utterly sure that it’s like he’s about to break. Strung out, every hiss and moan at the slide of Jeno’s lips resonating through him.

Jeno’s fingers brush against his clothed cock and his other hand pushes at his waistband, and Chenle takes it as an opportunity to discard his pants, throwing them on the floor, settling back against Jeno's hips, naked as the day he was born. He’s painfully hard, leaking everywhere, his stomach a mess from where he’d rubbed against himself while sucking Jeno off, and when Jeno stares at him it causes a thick bolt of lust to rocket through him — scorching, near violent.

“Oh, you’re big” Jeno says, hunger in his eyes. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, then he looks up at Chenle. “God, you’re gorgeous, Chenle.”

"Oh, so now you'll say it," Chenle says, but he bites his lip as Jeno meets his eyes, the way he looks at him tinged with something so reverent it almost hurts. It’s like being split open, cut in two, every part of him exposed to the light.

Jeno wraps a hand around him, and Chenle’s mind goes blank.

Physically it’s no different from the first time Jeno had done this. But it’s not like this has ever been physical — even back there there was a fire to it, an emotional high that skimmed across their skin, everything electrified and expectant.

And here it _sears_. The stroke of Jeno’s hand, the way he stares at him, warm, open. He thumbs at the head of Chenle’s cock and Chenle moans, low and deep, letting go of all of his inhibitions. Letting go of everything and allowing Jeno to see him like this.

And like this is:

“I can’t believe you have condoms,” Chenle says, as he watches a red cheeked Jeno retrieve the packet from his nightstand. “How did you even get them in here without me noticing? _Why_ are they in here?”

“I like to be prepared,” Jeno mumbles. “And.” He looks up, meeting Chenle’s eyes, face bright red. “If — if something happened. I didn’t want to not be able to.”

The implication knocks the air from Chenle, leaving him dizzy. Jeno had thought of this. How many times? Was this what was buried beneath all the walls in his mind?

“Oh,” Chenle says, and he’s not sure if he can say much more.

“Yeah.”

Jeno’s fingers are thick. Chenle refuses to lie on his back, and he ends up in Jeno’s lap instead, arms hooked around his shoulders, open mouthed panting as Jeno works him open, the slide of his hand slow and sure.

“You feel so good,” Jeno murmurs, and Chenle kisses him, clenching down around his fingers and fucking himself on Jeno’s hand.

“Yeah?” he asks, panting into Jeno’s mouth. “Gonna feel better on your cock.”

Jeno curses, the end of the word tapering off into a whimper as Chenle’s teeth graze along his bottom lip.

“You’re incredible. So incredible,” Jeno says. His other hand digs into Chenle’s ass as he spreads him open, slipping another finger in, and Chenle hisses, snapping his hips back into him. He needs this. He needs this so badly. This want that has gone from a candle flame to a signal fire, something that burns like a beacon.

He gasps as Jeno pumps his fingers, his cock rubbing against his sweat slick stomach, their kisses hot and wet.

“Jeno,” Chenle says, when he can’t take it anymore. He’s strung out and desperate, and as he clenches down against Jeno, he knows he needs more.

“Hmm?”

Chenle reaches behind and tugs at Jeno’s wrist, and Jeno gets the message, withdrawing his hand and leaving him empty. He goes to reach for the condoms but Chenle smacks his hand away.

“Let me,” Chenle says. “Just let me take care of you, okay? Relax.”

Something pulses in the air, something dark and heavy, glittering in the depths of Jeno’s eyes, and Chenle has to stop for a second because it’s near overwhelming.

Jeno is _afraid_. Bone deep, soaked in it, every part of the Drift pushing out, hanging off Chenle's shoulders. It curls around him, and it’s tinged red with lust — with something else he can barely put words to, something breathless that threatens to punch the air from him.

 _Oh_.

Oh god.

He doesn’t know which of them is feeling it. Where it started — if that even matters. It just seeps through him, dripping from his skin as he tears the condom open and rolls it down on Jeno’s cock, his hands shaking.

“Lie down,” Chenle says, and his voice cracks. His heart is so full it feels fit to burst, pressing against the walls of his chest, raw and rattling as Jeno falls back onto the mattress.

The way he stares at Chenle — spread out in the sheets, hands fit loosely around Chenle’s waist, everything about him open and vulnerable — it’s almost unbearable.

“You are so beautiful,” Jeno says.

Chenle shuts his eyes, white spots bursting against the backs of his eyelids before he opens them again. It’s like he can feel Jeno letting him in, feel the grooves of his bones where no-one else has been allowed to reside. Cradling it against his chest like brittle glass, something glowing and bright.

He lifts himself up on his knees and reaches back, wrapping his hand around Jeno’s cock and lining himself up.

The noise Jeno makes as Chenle sinks down onto him is ragged, wet, caught in the back of his throat and unbidden. It cracks open and pitches up and Chenle gasps, matching him, rolling his hips as he eases down onto him, his hands braced on Jeno’s chest.

Jeno has done a good job working him open, and he goes in with ease, only a slight burn, Chenle’s body adjusting quickly to the intrusion. Heat bursts across his skin, arcing all over him like a plasma coil; white lightning, purple light, and Chenle curses, head tipping forward, his entire body quivering, all his muscles tense.

“Jeno,” he gasps, and it’s almost terrifying how raw his name comes out. “Oh my fucking god, _Jeno_.”

When he lifts himself up he feels every inch of Jeno’s cock drag inside of him, and another whimper falls from his lips, a harsh pant that becomes rhythmic as he starts to fuck himself on Jeno’s cock. Slow, sure, his hands curling against Jeno’s chest, his breath wet, moans desperate.

“You feel so fucking good,” Jeno says. His hands fit around his waist, but he doesn’t use them to guide Chenle, only to anchor himself. He doesn’t pound up into him, he just moves in time with him. Synchronous, as they’ve always been. “You’re so _hot_.”

Chenle can’t help it. After that he needs to kiss him. He leans forward and Jeno’s cock shifts inside of him, his hips moving in deeper thrusts as Chenle presses their mouths together, no semblance of holding himself together, just pure want, just this _thing_ that flows between them that’s a part of his very being. Woven into his soul, cradled in his two hands. It burns through him and he lifts himself up, fucking back down onto Jeno’s cock, rolling his hips. He goes to brace himself on the bed and Jeno’s hands leave his waist. He nudges them against Chenle’s and Chenle gets the message.

Fingers twined together, Jeno’s hips working against him. Jeno’s cock inside of him, every part of him glowing.

“Yes,” Jeno says, and it’s so soft Chenle’s not even sure it’s conscious. “Yes, Chenle.”

“Fuck me,” Chenle says, and his thighs ache, and he feels so fucking strung out it’s like he’s about to break in two, and Jeno is only too happy to oblige. He loosens a hand from Chenle’s grip and grasps at his ass, spreading him open as he had when he’d fingered him, except the sensation is different. Except his cock is so much _fuller_. Except Chenle is on top of him — bowing over him and peppering kisses all over his face — not even trying to kiss his mouth anymore. Kissing at his neck and at his jaw, moaning against his skin.

He needs this. He needs this so badly. Not just his body, or his cock, or anything physical — it’s something bone deep, heart deep, blood and stardust — something words could never amount to.

“Chenle,” Jeno pants. “I’m close. Oh, fuck. I’m so close.”

“Don’t come,” Chenle says, and he grinds down onto him, nuzzling at his neck before he kisses him again, wet and deep, their breath mingling. “Wait for me.”

The sensation that comes when Chenle wraps his hand around his cock is like being smacked in the chest: open palm, full force, knocked to the ground, his thoughts scattered across the room. He gasps at the friction, and then Jeno is fucking into him in earnest. And then he’s matching it, jerking at himself furiously, panting Jeno’s name into his mouth as he tries to kiss him with at least some finesse.

Everything falls away. Everything breaks apart.

“Gonna come,” Jeno says, and Chenle gasps, shaking, Jeno’s hips slamming up into him.

“Come for me,” Chenle says. “Come for me, Jeno.”

His orgasm hits him a second later. Strikes him clean through, like he’s been shattered into pieces, hammer to glass, brilliant and multicoloured. Sweat slick and hot, Jeno’s nails digging into his skin, and Chenle loses the sense of everything else, tethered to the world only by Jeno.

Chenle steps up to the rig and raises his arms, allowing Sungchan to press the spinal clamp into the back of his Drivesuit.

“You are looking very chipper this morning,” Sungchan notes, as Chenle turns around and takes his helmet from him.

“I feel good about this,” he says, and shrugs. Across the room Jeno is talking with one of the assistants, though when he notices Chenle looking he meets eyes with him and smiles, something a little softer than usual.

Chenle returns it.

When they flip the switch, Chenle falls into it. No desperation. No panic. No fear. Something wordless and warm, something passed between them in their kisses, passed between them in the alignment of their bodies. In the press of Jeno’s hands in his skin, the way he’d felt when Chenle had sunk down on him.

It’s the first thing he thinks, and it’s the first thing he sees.

Shining, brilliant. Jeno sees him so beautiful it punches the air from his lungs. He glows, cut out from light, and Jeno is drawn to him like a moon to the sun.

It’s something open and vulnerable, and it bowls Chenle over, an avalanche that’s like stepping into the sunlight for the first time in years, everything bright and warm, everything washing over him.

Except Chenle isn’t drowning. There is no water in his lungs. There is just this. There is just —

“Your heart wasn’t in that,” Jaemin says. He stares at Jeno, eyes soft, pleading. “Were you thinking about him?”

“I wasn’t,” Jeno says. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I know you wouldn’t. Not on purpose. But I think you’d call me an idiot if I pretended that you didn't wish I was Chenle, wouldn’t you?”

Jaemin’s palm against his cheek is warm, and the look he gives Jeno is so fond it physically aches — an acknowledgement of a want that is bone deep.

He feels the tug at the back of his mind. He feels _Jeno_. Reaching out across the Drift, something that comes from the tattooed beat of his heart, a flower that has bloomed inside Jeno for so long its roots are wound around his lungs, breathing in time with him, petals that burst in firework splashes of colour across the backs of his eyelids.

It’s _terrifying_ , in only the way that something so raw can be. It’s terrifying because it feels like it could consume him, and Chenle knows in that very moment he would let it. It floods through him, and then the Drift is fading — and then he’s being eased out, the room colouring in around him.

Voices, strong, soft, flitting around him like moths in the lights.

“Neural Handshake complete,” Sungchan says, but Chenle isn’t listening. It’s background noise. He takes his helmet off and looks over to Jeno, who meets his eyes, and he swears he’s glowing. A faint outline, like he’s standing in the sun, everything about him seeped in a pale gold.

Chenle’s family home had once stood on a hill. A bamboo grove out front, a garden his mother had loved. Shielded away from the world, his own little bubble amongst the busy bustle of the city.

Now it’s half flattened. Ground zero and a bit more. A hundred meters away one of Pursuer’s ribs sticks over the top of the buildings like a finger pointed to the heavens. The stones are slick under his feet, and he and Jeno make the short walk to the top of the hill in silence; sky shaded concrete, grass wet with dew.

It’s Qingming. The city is eerily silent, and even the Shatterdome has all but frozen. Skeleton crew of a skeleton crew, only the foreigners left. Everyone else was told to go home, and for once Chenle had listened.

Chenle cleans the mud from his parents’ grave and places fresh incense in the burners. Flicker of the lighter, paper money going up in smoke, acrid scent coiling through the air as he kneels in the damp dirt and bows, flowers crushed under his palms.

When he stands up Jeno hands him the chrysanthemums, wordless, and Chenle places them against the stone. Murmurs a prayer, the Shanghainese shaky on his tongue, raspy, nearly forgotten. A few more words as they come to him.

_I’m still saving the world. I’m still here._

Flowers curling upwards, swaying in the breeze, bright yellow against white, the dead among the living. He and Jeno, living amongst the dead.

“Come on!” Chenle says, pushing open the door with his shoulder. “You’re gonna get soaked.”

The rain thrums down on the footpath, spitting up into the air. Jeno lags behind, staring up at the bruised sky, but at Chenle’s voice he seems to snap out of his daydream, shaking out his hair and apologising as he follows Chenle into the warmth of the restaurant.

Night has fallen, and with the sun gone the rain has come and broken open the sky, resulting in a downpour that had soaked them as they walked through an alley, cutting their wandering short.

“Oh,” Jeno says, blinking, raindrops on his shoulders as the door shuts behind him. "This looks good.”

It’s small and narrow, steam floating from the kitchen, whiteboard menu, wooden tables, crowded with people. Jeno and Chenle take the table by the window, sitting opposite each other, cradled in a nook that cuts them off from the rest of the restaurant but exposes them to the street. Sound from the inside, view from the outside.

“What do you think you’ll get?” Jeno says. He picks up the laminated menu off their table, opens it up and then frowns. Chenle can guess why — he can’t read Chinese. Not yet, anyway. Only a handful of words. Pilot. Jaeger. Fire. Sea. Door. Cardinal directions, numbers, colours.

He looks up at Chenle.

Heart.

There’s the oddest sense of deja vu, gripping at his insides, and then the memory comes out clean cut — like holding a photo up, staring straight through into a window to the past.

Kun in his civilian clothes, cradling a steaming cup of tea. The sky outside is grey and a fine mist of rain falls down, darkening the asphalt and sending ripples through the reflection of the LED signs from the seafood restaurant opposite.

Warm glow, warm lights. Chenle’s heart is a feather. They’re cut off from the rest of the restaurant, and so he feels safe speaking.

“I think I’m love, ge,” he says.

Chenle blinks. Remote, press fast forward.

In Kun’s place is Jeno, and he doesn’t quite fit. Different lines, different shape. Different smile. The photo flips over, and everything moves forward. Jeno doesn’t do anything with the menu — he just holds it in his hand and watches Chenle, neon lights playing off the hollows of his cheek. The drizzle is a downpour, and it splatters across the window, prismatic droplets scattering like light in a pond.

“You look like I lost you for a second there,” Jeno says.

“Not at all.” Chenle reaches across the table and takes the menu, their fingers brushing. “Just remembered something.”

That night he dreams of the sea again — of falling, falling, falling. The horrible screech of torn metal, the roar of a monster. Hitting the ocean's surface at terminal velocity and crashing below, fire slicing through the waves.

Only this time he doesn't drown. This time there's a hand that breaks the surface and reaches down. He grasps at it and it pulls him from the darkness, and when he wakes he is not alone. There's a body beside his, and he doesn't clutch at it. He doesn't claw at it.

He just closes his eyes and listens to Jeno breathe. Imagining the waves on the dock. Imagining the Pacific sunshine. Imagining Jeno — and then reaching out and touching.

That night, he dreams of the sea again, but it's like this:

It's like diving in, fully clothed. His shirt sticking to his back and billowing up, and when he surfaces Jeno is there, sitting on the shore. Beside him is a scrap of metal, and Chenle knows it should be the size of a football field, at least, but everything is kind of weird in dreams, and he's sure it's not the focal point.

The focal point is:

The bright sky and the soft sand. Chenle calling out to Jeno, and Jeno answering. Jeno's hands around his waist. Jeno's lips on his.

Opening his eyes. Stepping out of the water, and into the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> Please drop a comment and let me know what you thought <3 You can find me on 


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